by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
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Today, we are going to talk about the reign of Louis XVIII (1814 - 1815 , 1815 - 1824), under the Restoration in France, and particularly the Second Restoration which succeeded the "one hundred days" of the "Eagle Return", Napoleon I (March 20th, 1815 - June 22th, 1815) !
Usually, historians are mostly pointing out the first President of the Council of Ministers of Louis XVIII, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (1766 - 1822). Nominated on September 24th, 1815, he certainly helped the country to rise from its ashes : very skilful, he will make pay the war reparations due to the Allies by the big European banks, with the "Richelieu borrowing". However, in agriculture, the main sector of French economy at that time, he didn't do so well !
Then, we have chosen to highlight the less known, but quite significant role of the last one, Joseph De Villèle (1773 - 1854). De Villèle is the one who was surprisingly victorious of the fearsome Carbonari in France in 1822, for instance. But his specificity was to be victorious on all fronts, by unexpectedly giving back France its grandeur. It is not so far, and yet it is one of the less known and studied period of our history. So get ready for some really unexpected surprises or revelations !
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After the "100 days" and the return of Louis XVIII (1755 - 1824) in the beginning of July 1815, there were a certain number of acts of revenge against previous soldiers of the "Great Army" of Napoleon. Between 300 and 500 men found death in the South of France and in the Rhône valley : the assassination of the Marshal Guillaume Brune (1763 - 1815) in Avignon on August 2nd, 1815, who was then thrown in the Rhône river was highly symbolic of this troubled time. This period was called the "White Terror". It provoked the anger of the Duke of Wellington (1769 - 1852), Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces, and winner of Napoleon I in Waterloo (June 18th, 1815). Wherever the British troops were present in the occupied France (it was occupied by British, Austrian, Russian, and Prussian Allies till november 1818), they stopped them. And Wellington demanded from Louis XVIII himself to give orders to prohibit and prevent this type of actions - which may look rather paradoxical from the main enemy of Napoleon !
About that, it has to be added that Arthur Wellesley (the original name of Wellington), had been in his youth Lieutenant Instructor of Infantry in the Military School of Angers (France, 1787). And he had a certain admiration for the greatness of Napoleon I (1769 - 1821) and his valorous troops. He certainly won in Waterloo by using the antic strategy of Alexander the Great (359 BC - 323 BC), that he was taught in France, against Napoleon. Yet, he demonstrated afterwards a kind of brotherhood of arms towards the honorable defeated. And it's him who had equally imposed to the Austrian Chancelor Metternich (1773 - 1859) the non exclusion of France from the Concert of Nations in the Congress of Vienna (1815)...far more than the cunning Talleyrand (1754 - 1838) ! But to the credit of the latter, it was nevertheless him who had introduced Viennese Waltz in France, as soon as January 3rd, 1798, during a party, in his hotel of Faubourg Saint Germain ! As another aside, in 1792 the Empire of Austria had refused to "buy back" the French Royal family emprisoned in the Temple Jail in Paris from Danton (1759 - 1794), the French Minister of Justice - who would have in this proposed process signed his prepared "decree of deportation". And this could have avoided a lot of subsequent problems, even it looked unorthodox !
On the other hand, coming back to the "White Terror" - on a legal level this time -, several Napoleon's high officers were judged for high treason towards the King, like Marshal Michel Ney (1769 - 1815) who was sentenced to death by the House of Peers : he was executed on December 7th, 1815. And on January 12th, 1816, a law was passed against previous conventional regicides - like Joseph Fouché (1759 - 1820) also said "the Machine Gun of Lyon", with the punishment of banishment. Yet the Bonapartist question remained dominant during all the reign of Louis XVIII and even after. Bonapartists were the main opponents to the new regime. The remaining Jacobins were not very numerous. And their regime had left very bad memories with the Terror and the genocide of the Vendée...or the horrible forgotten massacre directed against the population of Lyon (badly nicknamed the "Town without name"). Then at that time, they were just associating themselves with the Bonapartist mainstream, by considering Napoleon as the heir of the Revolution - even he had become himself a Monarch !
Great Britain had really taken a rather long time after the "official death" of Louis XVII (June 8th., 1795), to accept the Count of Provence on its soil (Gossfield Hall in Essex first in 1807, and then Hartwell house in the Buckinghamshire under the name of "Count of Lille"). He was finally admitted for humanitarian reasons, because he had been expelled from Russia, just after the French-Russian treaty of Tilsit in 1807. And it was the same for his effective recognition as the new King of France, under the name of Louis XVIII : before March 12th, 1814, for instance, Great Britain was still reluctant to accept him to replace Napoleon I. As Great Britain had saved Louis Charles Capet (Louis XVII - 1785-1860 in fact) from the Temple Jail on January, 19th 1794, with the inopinate intervention of the Count of Courtenay and Miss Barett, his assistant from the British Secret Services, she was hesitating in her choice !
The son of Louis XVI was sheltered in the North-East of England, far enough from the French coasts, as a landlord ("Nay" being "under the shadows", as predicted by Nostradamus in the Quatrain V-41). And he was now just called Charles (or Charlie) by his very pretty English girlfriend. He had found love over there, and he wasn't very keen to come back to France. He didn't wish at that time to be King of this terrible country which had traumatized him as a child, and that he considered as a cutting-throat country where everyone was envying and hating each other. He had just observed in his time, that this society he had thought without faith or law, was periodically shaken under the strange yoyo movement of the antic law of Talion (Old Testament). Nevertheless, with the work of time, his opinion changed a little bit thereafter. But it remains that he was considering France could be an appaling country for any ruler !
Louis XVIII being laboriously and by default recognized as the successor of his brother Louis XVI (1754 - 1793 ?), things finally went on with the British and the Duke of Wellington. However, the political turmoil happening in France was making the situation difficult. "The unfoundable Chamber" ("la Chambre Introuvable" in French) is the nickname Louis XVIII gave himself to the Chamber of Deputies at the beginning of his reign, when he couldn't find any clear majority in favor of his government. He had granted France a constitutional Chart on June 4th, 1814, which he tried to respect in an unlasting will of appeasement and reconciliation. If it seemed all right at the beginning with a huge majority of Royalists, the number of Ultras appeared quickly too important in front of the Moderates (370 out of 402). And this Chamber wanted to impose its views to the King and his governement, which he didn't like. He finally took the risk to dissolve it on September 5th, 1816...and he won : the new Assembly of Deputies of Departments was far more moderate and easy to handle for him, at last. And the Chart of 1814 could be finally enforced, with the end of the laws of exception !
As an epilogue, it has nevertheless to be noticed that Louis XVIII was never really free in his movements and political choices. As a matter of fact, quickly the past reappeared in his life with the arrival of Zoé de Bashi du Cayla, born Talon (1785 - 1852). She was the daughter of Omer Talon, the previous Civil Lieutenant of Châtelet in Paris, id est the prosecutor of this Court of Justice. It's Talon who had to instruct the complaint of the Baron Jean de Batz (1754 - 1822) about the insurrection of October 5th and 6th, 1789. He started well by involving obviously the Duke of Orleans (1747 - 1793), the Marquis of La Fayette (1757 - 1834), Madame Beauprez (in fact Madame Girard), but also the Count of Mirabeau (1749 - 1791) or even Camille Desmoulins (1760 - 1794), the "stuttering Cicero" of the Revolution and the comparse of Philip Equality !
But he could never go through, because he was finally pushed to resign for his security, as being involved himself in the tenebrous De Favras case implying the Count of Provence ! To summarize the planned operation of kidnapping of Louis XVI and his family by the Marquis Thomas de Mahy de Favras (1744 - 1790), first lieutenant of the Swiss guards or the Count of Provence in the end of 1789, might have aimed more likeky at killing him "accidentaly" with his son, than sheltering all of them in Lille area. De Favras had the peculiarity to be hanged after his trial in 1790, not guillotined then. About him, it has to be underlined, that Omer Talon had convinced him not to denounce the Count of Provence, brother of the King Louis XVI !
The Love affair between the Countess Zoé du Cayla and Louis XVIII started in 1817 after she had come to the Tuileries to ask for his protection, concerning the disputed custody of her children. He fell immediately under her exquisite charm. And he reserved swiftly his wednesdays for Zoé, and had often "peppery evenings" in her company following his own expression ! His health wasn't very good yet as he was fat and had painful feet : he was suffering from gout. However, another explanation, less traditional, given to their link, is connected to a secret letter in her possession coming from her father Omer Talon signed by De Favras, and involving Louis XVIII (as previous Count of Provence) in the De Favras case. Those details are important, because Zoé du Cayla has been seen also as a kind of spy of Louis XVIII's brother, the Count of Artois (1757 - 1836), head of the Ultra-Royalists. And Zoé had a recognized influence on the decisions of Louis XVIII, as his favorite !
On December 14th, 1821, the year after the assassination by the Bonapartist Louvel (1783 - 1820) of the son of the Count of Artois, the Duke of Berry (February 13th, 1820), Louis XVIII finally chose the leader of the Ultra-Royalist Deputies, Joseph de Villèle from Toulouse, as Minister of Finance. Then, in September 1822 he became his President of the Council of Ministers as the Count De Villèle, while remaining in Finance. Absent from France during the Revolution as he was a marine officer, he had become meanwhile a member of the "Knights of Faith" in 1813, a very influent Royalist secret society created in 1810. For instance, the famous writer and politician, François-René de Chateaubriand (1768 - 1848) was also a member. Founded by Ferdinand de Bertier de Sauvigny (1782 - 1864), this secret society self-dissolved apparently in 1826, after its success in the advent and the establishment of Restoration...or even at his death on September 5th, 1864 !
This secret Order of Chivalry was directly modelled on Free Masonry, and had five levels (charity associates which gave them an appearance of catholic congregation, squires, knights, knights hospitaller, and knights of faith), plus one : the Superior Council of the Nine, which was counting De Villèle ! Extremely compartmentalized, Board members didn't know each other until a special meeting was held. It is this organization which had welcome the Duke of Wellington in Bordeaux on March 12th, 1814 in the name of Louis XVIII, and had then tipped definitively the scales in favor of Louis XVIII to succeed Napoleon I the following month... rather than the potential and far too young candidate of Austria, Napoleon II (1811 - 1832) ! Coming back to De Villèle, his esoteric knowledge most likely helped him to fight with success the Carbonari (a Revolutionary secret society, from Italian origin), which in France self-dissolved after the failure of the attempt of insurrection of the Four Sergents of La Rochelle in 1822. Very contradictorily, this secret organization which had fought Napoleon in Italy, was welcoming Bonapartist opponents to Louis XVIII in France !
In power, De Villèle, as a top leader of the Ultra-Royalist Deputies, quite paradoxically appeared to be far more moderate than other Ultras when working for Louis XVIII. He was successful in his double position for several years, and the country knew a period of unprecedented prosperity - agriculture included this time. De Villèle used the Deposit and Consignment Fund ("Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations", created in 1816) to finance great industrial projects, such as the renovation of Dunkirk harbour. And the Saving Bank ("Caisse d'Epargne", 1818) was also a very good instrument for his financial policy : still very important nowadays like the previous financial institution mentioned, it was too created under the Restoration for the public good, id est for modest families to help them saving money and increasing their assets.
On a military point of view, France rebecame a great military power after the intervention in Spain he ordered in 1823, to support the Bourbons of Spain. The campaign was rapid (only a few months), efficient, and powerful as he wanted, with the capture of the Trocadero Fort in the harbour of Cadix : two hundred years ago, this great victory was celebrated in France, and gave its name to the "Trocadéro area" in Paris thereafter. France was anew suddenly important in the Concert of Nations, which appeared so amazing at that time ! And it has to be noticed that De Villèle remained with unchanged powers even after the death of Louis XVIII in 1824, under his successor Charles X (previously Count of Artois) till 1828 !
