The coronation of Louis XVI. took place the 11th of June, 1775, and
since that time there had been none. For Louis XVII. there was none but
that of sorrow. Louis XVIII. had desired it eagerly, but he was not
sufficiently strong or alert to bear the fatigue of a ceremony so long
and complicated, and his infirmities would have been too evident
beneath the vault of the ancient Cathedral of Rheims. An interval of
fifty years--from 1775 to 1825--separated the coronation of Louis XVI.
from that of his brother Charles X. How many things had passed in that
half-century, one of the most fruitful in vicissitudes and
catastrophes, one of the strangest and most troubled of which history
has preserved the memory!
Chateaubriand, who, later, in his Memoires d'outretombe, so full of
sadness and bitterness, was to speak of the coronation in a tone of
scepticism verging on raillery, celebrated at the accession of Charles,
in almost epic language, the merits of this traditional solemnity
without which a "Very Christian King" was not yet completely King. In
his pamphlet, Le roi est mort! Vive le roi! he conjured the new monarch
to give to his crown this religious consecration. "Let us humbly
supplicate Charles X. to imitate his ancestors," said the author of the
Genie du Christianisme. "Thirty-two sovereigns of the third race have
received the royal unction, that is to say, all the sovereigns of that
race except Jean 1er, who died four days after his birth, Louis XVII.,
and Louis XVIII., on whom royalty fell, on one in the Tower of the
Temple, on the other in a foreign land. The words of Adalberon,
Archbishop of Rheims, on the subject of the coronation of Hugh Capet,
are still true to-day. 'The coronation of the King of the French,' he
says, 'is a public interest and not a private affair, Publica, sunt
haec negotia, non privata.' May Charles X. deign to weigh these words,
applied to the author of his race; in weeping for a brother, may he
remember that he is King! The Chambers or the Deputies of the Chambers
whom he may summon to Rheims in his suite, the magistrates who shall
swell his cortege, the soldiers who shall surround his person, will
feel the faith of religion and royalty strengthened in them by this
imposing solemnity. Charles VII. created knights at his coronation; the
first Christian King of the French, at his received baptism with four
thousand of his companions in arms. In the same way Charles X. will at
his coronation create more than one knight of the cause of legitimacy,
and more than one Frenchman will there receive the baptism of fidelity."
Charles X. had no hesitation. This crowned representative of the union
of the throne and the altar did not comprehend royalty without
coronation. Not to receive the holy unction would have been for him a
case of conscience, a sort of sacrilege. In opening the session of the
Chambers in the Hall of the Guards at the Louvre, December 22d, 1824,
he announced, amid general approval, the grand solemnity that was to
take place at Rheims in the course of the following year. "I wish," he
said, "the ceremony of my coronation to close the first session of my
reign. You will attend, gentlemen, this august ceremony. There,
prostrate at the foot of the same altar where Clovis received the holy
unction, and in the presence of Him who judges peoples and kings, I
shall renew the oath to maintain and to cause to be respected the
institutions established by my brother; I shall thank Divine Providence
for having deigned to use me to repair the last misfortunes of my
people, and I shall pray Him to continue to protect this beautiful
France that I am proud to govern."
If Napoleon, amid sceptical soldiers, former conventionnels, and former
regicides, had easily secured the adoption of the idea of his
coronation at Notre-Dame, by so much the more easy was it for Charles
X. to obtain the adoption, by royalist France, of the project of his
coronation at Rheims. "The King saw in this act," said Lamartine, "a
real sacrament for the crown, the people a ceremony that carried its
imagination back to the pomps of the past, politicians a concession to
the court of Rome, claiming the investiture of kings, and a denial in
fact of the principle, not formulated but latent since 1789, of the
sovereignty of the people. But as a rule, there was no vehement
discussion of an act generally considered as belonging to the etiquette
of royalty, without importance for or against the institutions of the
country. It was the fete of the accession to the throne--a luxury of
the crown. The oaths to exterminate heretics, formerly taken by the
kings of France at their coronation, were modified in concert with the
court of Rome and the bishops. For these was substituted the oath to
govern according to the Charter. Thus it was in reality a new
consecration of liberty as well as of the crown." The French love pomp,
ceremonies, spectacles. The idea of a consecration was not displeasing
to them, and with rare exceptions, the Voltaireans themselves refrained
from criticising the ceremony that was in the course of preparation. It
soon became the subject of conversation on every side.
Six millions voted by the two Chambers for the expenses of the
coronation, at the time that the civil list was regulated at the
beginning of the reign, permitted the repairs required by the Cathedral
of Rheims to be begun in January, 1825. The arches that had sunken, or
threatened to do so, were strengthened; the ancient sculptured
decorations were restored; the windows were completed; the fallen
statues were raised. It was claimed that even the holy ampulla had been
found, that miraculous oil, believed, according to the royal
superstitions of former ages, to have been brought from heaven by a
dove for the anointing of crowned heads. The Revolution thought that it
had destroyed this relic forever. The 6th of October, 1793, a
commissioner of the Convention, the representative of the people, Ruhl,
had, in fact, publicly broken it on the pedestal of the statue of Louis
XV. But it was related that faithful hands had succeeded in gathering
some fragments of the phial as well as some particles of the balm
contained in it. The 25th of January, 1819, the Abbe Seraine, who in
1793 was cure of Saint-Remi of Rheims, made the following declaration:--
"The 17th of October, 1793, M. Hourelle, then municipal officer and
first warden of the parish of Saint-Remi, came to me and notified me,
from the representative of the people, Ruhl, of the order to remit the
reliquary containing the holy ampulla, to be broken. We resolved, M.
Hourelle and I, since we could do no better, to take from the holy
ampulla the greater part of the balm contained in it. We went to the
Church of Saint-Remi; I withdrew the reliquary from the tomb of the
saint, and bore it to the sacristy, where I opened it with the aid of
small iron pincers. I found placed in the stomach of a dove of gold and
gilded silver, covered with white enamel, having the beak and claws in
red, the wings spread, a little phial of glass of reddish color about
an inch and a half high corked with a piece of crimson damask. I
examined this phial attentively in the light, and I perceived a great
number of marks of a needle on the sides; then I took from a crimson
velvet bag, embroidered with fleurs-de-lis in gold, the needle used at
the time of the consecration of our kings, to extract the particles of
balm, dried and clinging to the glass. I detached as many as possible,
of which I took the larger part, and remitted the smaller to M.
Hourelle."
The particles thus preserved were given into the hands of the
Archbishop of Rheims, who gathered them in a new reliquary.
Sunday, the 22d of May, 1825, the day of the feast of the Pentecost,
the Archbishop of Rheims assembled in a chapel of that city the
metropolitan clergy, the principal authorities, and the persons who had
contributed to the preservation of the particles of the precious relic,
in order to proceed, in their presence, to the transfusion of those
particles into the holy chrism, to be enclosed in a new phial. A
circumtantial report of this ceremony was prepared in duplicate.
"Thus," said the Moniteur, May 26, "there remains no doubt that the
holy oil that will flow on the forehead of Charles X. in the solemnity
of his consecration, is the same as that which, since Clovis, has
consecrated the French monarchs."
The day of the consecration approached. The Mayor of Rheims, M. Ruinard
de Brimont, had not a moment's rest. At the consecration of Louis XV.,
about four hundred lodgings had been marked with chalk. For that of
Charles X. there were sixteen hundred, and those who placed them at the
service of the administration asked no compensation. The 19th of May
was begun the placing of the exterior decorations on the wooden porch
erected in front of the door of the basilica. It harmonized so
completely with the plan of the edifice that "at thirty toises," it
seemed a part of the edifice. The centrings and the interior portieres
of this porch presented to the view a canopy sown with fleurs-de-lis in
the midst of which stood out the royal cipher and the crown of France,
modelled in antique fashion. These decorations were continued from the
portal along the beautiful gallery that led to the palace. The palace
itself, whose apartments had been adorned and furnished with royal
magnificence, was entered by a very elegant porch. The grand
feasting-hall, with its Gothic architecture, its colored glass, its
high chimney-piece covered with escutcheons and surmounted by a statue
of Saint-Remi, its portraits of all the kings of France, was
resplendent. Three tables were to be set in the royal
feasting-hall,--that of the King, that of the Dauphiness, and that of
the Duchess of Berry. A gallery enclosed in glass, where there was a
table of one hundred and thirty covers, had been built as by
enchantment. On leaving the feasting-hall, one entered the covered
gallery, which, by a gentle incline, led to the Cathedral. This gallery
was formed of twenty-four arcades of fifteen feet each, and joined at
right angles the porch erected before the portal. By this arrangement
the King could proceed on a level from his apartment to the Cathedral.
In the middle of the nave was erected a magnificent jube, where the
throne of Charles X. was placed. The cornice of the Corinthian order
was supported by twenty columns. At the four corners there were gilded
angels. The summit was surmounted by a statue of Religion and an angel
bearing the royal crown. This jube, glittering with gold, was placed
about one hundred and fifty feet from the portal. There was a passage
under it to reach the choir, and the ascent to it was by a staircase of
thirty steps. As it was open, the King upon his throne could be seen
from all parts of the basilica. At the end of the choir, to the right
on entering, was the gallery of the Dauphiness and the Duchess of
Berry; to the left, opposite, was that of the princes and princesses of
the blood; lower, toward the jube, and also on the left, that of the
ambassadors and strangers of distinction; by the side of the jube, the
gallery of the first gentlemen of the chamber of the King. There were,
moreover, two rows of galleries on each side of the nave. The sanctuary
was beaming with gold. The pillars, surrounded with wainscoting, were
covered with rich Gothic ornaments. Above each of the galleries was a
portrait of a king of France seated on his throne; still higher,
portraits of bishops and statues of the cities of France in niches. At
the back, a platform had been constructed for the musicians of the
Chapel of the King. The choir and the sanctuary were to be lighted by
thirty-four grand chandeliers, besides the candelabra attached to each
pillar.
Some days before the coronation, which excited the curiosity of all
Europe, the city of Rheims was filled with a crowd of tourists. The
streets and promenades of the city, usually so quiet, presented an
extraordinary animation. There had been constructed a bazaar, tents,
cafes, places for public games, and at the gates of the city there was
a camp of ten thousand men. To visit this camp was a favorite excursion
for the people and for strangers. The soldiers assembled each evening
before their tents and sang hymns to the sovereign and the glory of the
French arms. In the evening of the 22d of May, these military choruses
were closed by the serment francais, sung by all voices. At the words
"Let us swear to be faithful to Charles!" all heads were uncovered, and
the soldiers waving their helmets and shakos in the air, cried over and
again, "Long live the King!"
On May 24th, the King left Paris with the Dauphin. Before going to
Rheims he stopped at the Chateau of Compiegne, where he remained until
the 27th, amid receptions and fetes and hunts.