LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY.
Louis Philippe, after accepting the lieutenant-generalship of the
kingdom, which would have made him regent under Henri V., found
himself raised by the will of the people--or rather, as some said,
by the will of the _bourgeoisie_--to the French throne. He reigned,
not by "right divine," but as the chosen ruler of his countrymen,--to
mark which distinction he took the title of King of the French,
instead of King of France, which had been borne by his predecessors.
It is hardly necessary for us to enter largely into French politics
at this period. The government was supposed to be a monarchy planted
upon republican institutions. The law recognized no hereditary
aristocracy. There was a chamber of peers, but the peers bore no
titles, and were chosen only for life. The dukes, marquises, and
counts of the old régime retained their titles only by courtesy.
The ministers of Charles X. were arrested and tried. The new king
was very anxious to secure their personal safety, and did so at a
considerable loss of his own popularity. They were condemned to
lose all property and all privileges, and were sent to the strong
fortress of Ham. After a few years they were released, and took
refuge in England.
There were riots in Paris when it was known that the ministers
and ill-advisers of the late king were not to be executed; one
of the leaders in these disturbances was an Italian bravo named
Fieschi,--a man base, cruel, and bold, whom Louis Blanc calls a
_scélérat bel esprit_.
The _émeute_ which was formidable, was suppressed chiefly by a
gallant action on the part of the king, who, while his health was
unimpaired, was never wanting in bravery. "The king of the French,"
says Greville, "has put an end to the disturbances in Paris about
the sentence of the ministers by an act of personal gallantry. At
night, when the streets were most crowded and agitated, he sallied
from the Palais Royal on horseback, with his son, the Duc de Nemours,
and his personal _cortège_, and paraded through Paris for two hours.
That did the business. He was received with shouts of applause,
and at once reduced everything to tranquillity. He deserves his
throne for this, and will probably keep it."
The next trouble in the new reign was the alienation of public
favor from Lafayette, who had done so much to place the king upon
the throne. He was accused by one party of truckling to the new
court, by the other of being too much attached to revolutionary
methods and republican institutions. He was removed from the command
of the National Guard, and his office of commander-in-chief of
that body was abolished.
All Europe becomes "a troubled sea" when a storm breaks over France.
"I never remember," writes Greville at this period, "days like
these, nor read of such,--the terror and lively expectation that
prevails, and the way in which people's minds are turned backward and
forward from France to Ireland, then range exclusively from Poland
to Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots, and executions
that are going on in England."
Meantime France was subsiding into quiet, with occasional slight
shocks of revolutionary earthquake, before returning to order and
peace. The king was _le bon bourgeois_. He had lived a great deal
in England and the United States, and spoke English well. He had
even said in his early youth that he was more of an Englishman
than a Frenchman. He was short and stout. His head was shaped like
a pear, and was surmounted by an elaborate brown wig; for in those
days people rarely wore their own gray hair.
He did not impress those who saw him as being in any way majestic;
indeed, he looked like what he was,--_le bon père de famille_.
As such he would have suited the people of England; but it was
_un vert galant_ like Henri IV., or royalty incarnate, like Louis
XIV., who would have fired the imagination of the French people.
As a good father of a family, Louis Philippe felt that his first
duty to his children was to secure them a good education, good
marriages, and sufficient wealth to make them important personages
in any sudden change of fortune.
At the time of his accession all his children were unmarried,--indeed,
only four of them were grown up. The sons all went to _collège_,--which
means in France what high-school does with us. Their mother's
dressing-room at Neuilly was hung round with the laurel-crowns,
dried and framed, which had been won by her dear school-boys.
The eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, was an extraordinarily
fine young man, far more a favorite with the French people than his
father. Had he not been killed in a carriage accident in 1842, he
might now, in his old age, have been seated on the French throne.
One of the first objects of the king was to secure for his heir
a suitable marriage. A Russian princess was first thought of; but
the Czar would not hear of such a _mésalliance_. Then the hand of an
Austrian archduchess was sought, and the young lady showed herself
well pleased with the attentions of so handsome and accomplished a
suitor; but her family were as unfavorable to the match as was the
Czar of Russia. Finally, the Duke of Orleans had to content himself
with a German Protestant princess, Hélène of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
a woman above all praise, who bore him two sons,--the Comte de
Paris, born in 1838, and the Duc de Chartres, born a year or two
later.
The eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Louise, was
married, soon after her father's elevation to the throne, to King
Leopold of Belgium, widower of the English Princess Charlotte, and
uncle to Prince Albert and to Queen Victoria. The French princess
thus became, by her marriage, aunt to these high personages. They
were deeply attached to her. She named her eldest daughter Charlotte,
after the lamented first wife of her husband. The name was Italianized
into Carlotta,--the poor Carlotta whose reason and happiness were
destroyed by the misfortunes of her husband in Mexico.
The second son of Louis Philippe was the Duc de Nemours,--a _blond_,
stiff young officer who was never a favorite with the French, though
he distinguished himself in Algeria as a soldier. He too found it
hard to satisfy his father's ambition by a brilliant marriage,
though a throne was offered him, which he had to refuse. He then
aspired to the hand of Maria da Gloria, the queen of Portugal;
but he married eventually a pretty little German princess of the
Coburg race.
The third son was Philippe, Prince de Joinville, the sailor. He
chose a bride for himself at the court of Brazil, and brought her
home in his frigate, the "Belle Poule."
The charming artist daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Marie,
pupil and friend of Ary Scheffer, the artist, married the Duke of
Würtemberg, and died early of consumption. Her only child was sent
to France, and placed under the care of his grandmother. Princess
Clémentine married a colonel in the Austrian service, a prince
of the Catholic branch of the house of Coburg. Her son is Prince
Ferdinand, the present ruler of Bulgaria.
The marriage of Louis Philippe's fifth son, the Duc de Montpensier,
with the Infanta Luisa is so closely connected with Louis Philippe's
downfall that it can be better told elsewhere; but we may here
say a few words about the fortunes of Henri, Duc d'Aumale, the
king's fourth son, who has proved himself a man brave, generous,
patriotic and high-minded, a soldier, a statesman, an historian,
patron of art, and in all these things a man eminent among his
fellows. He was only a school-boy when a tragic and discreditable
event made him heir of the great house of Condé, and endowed him
with wealth that he refuses to pass on to his family, proposing
at his death to present it to the French people and the French
Academy.
The royal family of the house of Bourbon was divided in France into
three branches,--the reigning branch, the head of which was Charles
X.; the Orleans branch, the head of which was Louis Philippe; and
the Condé branch, the chief of which, and its sole representative
at this period, was the aged Duke of Bourbon, whose only son, the
Prince d'Enghien, had been shot by order of Napoleon.
This old man, rich, childless, and miserable, had had a romantic
history. When very young he had fallen violently in love with his
cousin, the Princess Louise of Orleans. He was permitted to marry
her, but only on condition that they should part at the church
door,--she to enter a convent for two years, he to serve for the
same time in the French army. They were married with all pomp and
ceremony; but that night the ardent bridegroom scaled the walls
of the convent and bore away his bride. Unhappily their mutual
attachment did not last long. "It went out," says a contemporary
memoir-writer, "like a fire of straw."[1] At last hatred took the
place of love, and the quarrels between the Prince de Condé (as
the Duc de Bourbon was then called) and his wife were among the
scandals of the court of Louis XVI., and helped to bring odium
on the royal family.
[Footnote 1: Madame d'Oberkirch.]
The only child of this marriage was the Duc d'Enghien. The princess
died in the early days of the Revolution. Her husband formed the
army of French _émigrés_ at Coblentz, and led them when they invaded
their own country. On the death of his father he became Duke of
Bourbon, but his promising son, D'Enghien, was already dead. The
duke married while in exile the princess of Monaco, a lady of very
shady antecedents. She was, however, received by Louis XVIII. in
his little court at Hartwell. She died soon after the Restoration.
In 1830 the old duke, worn out with sorrows and excesses, was completely
under the power of an English adventuress, a Madame de Feuchères.[1]
He had settled on her his Château de Saint-Leu, together with very
large sums of money. Several years before 1830 it had occurred to
Madame de Feuchères that the De Rohans, who were related to the
duke on his mother's side, might dispute these gifts and bequests,
and by way of making herself secure, she sought the protection
of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans. She offered to use her
influence with the Duke of Bourbon to induce him to make the Duc
d'Aumale, who was his godson, his heir, if Louis Philippe would
engage to stand her friend in any trouble.
[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc.]
The relations of the Duc de Bourbon to this woman bore a strong
resemblance to those that Thackeray has depicted between Becky
Sharp and Jos Sedley. The old man became thoroughly in fear of
her; and when the Revolution broke out later, he was also much
afraid of being plundered and maltreated at Saint-Leu by the
populace,--not, however, because he had any great regard for his
cousin Charles X., with whom in his youth he had fought a celebrated
duel. Impelled by these two fears, he resolved to escape secretly
from France, and so rid himself of the tyranny of Madame de Feuchères
and the dangers of Revolution.
He arranged his flight with a trusted friend; it was fixed for
the day succeeding Aug. 31, 1830,--a month after the Revolution.
That evening he retired to his chamber in good spirits, though
he said good-night more impressively than usual to some persons
in his household. The next morning he was found dead, hanging to
one of the _espagnolettes_, or heavy fastenings, of a tall French
window. The village authorities were summoned; but although it
was impossible a man so infirm could have thus killed himself and
though many other circumstances proved that he did not die by his
own hand, they certified his death by suicide. The Catholic Church,
however, did not accept this verdict, and the duke was buried with
the rites of religion.
There was certainly no proof that Madame de Feuchères had had any
hand in the murder of the old man who had plotted to escape from
her, and who had expressed to others his dread of the tyranny she
exercised over him; but there was every ground for strong suspicion,
and the public lost no time in fastening part of the odium that
attached to the supposed murderess on the king, whose family had
so greatly benefited by her influence over the last head of the
house of Condé. She retained her ill-gotten wealth, and removed
at once to Paris. She had been engaged in stock operations for
some time, and now gave herself up to them, winning enormous sums.
The new throne was sadly shaken by these events, added to discontents
concerning the king's prudent policy of non-intervention in the
attempted revolutions of other countries, which followed that of
France in 1830 and 1831. The next very interesting event of this
reign was the escapade and the discomfiture of the young Duchesse
de Berri.
About the close of 1832, while France and all Europe were still
experiencing the after-shocks which followed the Revolution of
July, Marie Caroline, the Duchesse de Berri, planned at Holyrood
a descent upon France in the interests of the Duc de Bordeaux,
her son.[1] Had he reigned in consequence of the deaths of his
grandfather and uncle, Charles X. and the Duc d'Angoulême, the
duchess his mother was to have been regent during his minority.
She regretted her inaction during the days of July, when, had she
taken her son by the hand and presented him herself to the people,
renouncing in his name and her own all ultra-Bourbon traditions
and ideas, she might have saved the dynasty.
[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc and papers in "Figaro."]
[Illustration: MARIE CAROLINE FERDINANDE LOUISE, DUCHESSE DE BERRY.
Née à Naples, le 5 Novembre 1798.]
Under the influence of this regret, and fired by the idea of becoming
another Jeanne d'Albret, she urged her plans on Charles X., who
decidedly disapproved of them; but "the idea of crossing the seas
at the head of faithful paladins, of landing after the perils and
adventures of an unpremeditated voyage in a country of knights-errant,
of eluding by a thousand disguises the vigilance of enemies through
whom she had to pass, of wandering, a devoted mother and a banished
queen, from hamlet to hamlet and from château to château, appealing
to human nature high and low on its romantic side, and at the end of
a victorious conspiracy unfurling in France the ancient standard of
the monarchy, was too dazzling not to attract a young, high-spirited
woman, bold through her very ignorance, heroic through mere levity,
able to endure anything but depression and _ennui_, and prepared to
overbear all opposition with plausible platitudes about a mother's
love."[1]
[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans.]
At last Charles X. consented to let her follow her own wishes;
but he placed her under the guardianship of the Duc de Blancas.
She set out through Holland and the Tyrol for Italy. She travelled
_incognita_, of course. Charles Albert, of Sardinia, received her
at Turin with great personal kindness, and lent her a million of
francs,--which he borrowed from a nobleman of his court under pretence
of paying the debts of his early manhood; but he was forced to
request her to leave his dominions, and she took refuge with the
Duke of Modena, who assigned her a palace at Massa, about three
miles from the Mediterranean. A rising was to be made simultaneously
in Southern France and in La Vendée. Lyons had just been agitated
by a labor insurrection, and Marseilles was the first point at
which it was intended to strike.
The Legitimists in France were divided into two parties. One, under
Chateaubriand and Marshal Victor, the Duc de Bellune, wished to
restore Henri V. only by parliamentary and legal victories; the
other, favored by the court at Holyrood, was for an armed intervention
of the Great Powers. The Duc de Blancas was considered its head.
The question of the invasion of France with foreign troops was
excitedly argued at Massa. The duchess wished above all things to
get rid of the tutelage of M. de Blancas, and she was disposed to
favor, to a certain extent, the more moderate views of Chateaubriand.
After endless quarrels she succeeded in sending off the duke to
Holyrood, and was left to take her own way.
April 14, 1832, was fixed upon for leaving Massa. It was given out
that the duchess, was going to Florence. At nightfall a carriage,
containing the duchess, with two ladies and a gentleman of her
suite, drove out of Massa and waited under the shadow of the city
wall. While a footman was absorbing the attention of the coachman
by giving him some minute, unnecessary orders, Madame (as they
called the duchess) slipped out of the carriage door with one of her
ladies, while two others, who were standing ready in the darkness,
took their places. The carriage rolled away towards Florence, while
Madame and her party, stealing along under the dark shadow of the
city wall, made their way to the port, where a steamer was to take
them on board.
That steamer was the "Carlo Alberto," a little vessel which had
been already used by some republican conspirators, and had been
purchased for the service of Marie Caroline. It had some of her
most devoted adherents on board, but the captain was in ignorance.
He thought himself bound for Genoa, and was inclined to disobey
when his passengers ordered him to lay to off the harbor of Massa.
However, they used force, and at three in the morning Marie Caroline,
who was sleeping, wrapped in her cloak, upon the sand, was roused,
put on board a little boat, and carried out to the steamer. She
had a tempestuous passage of four days to Marseilles. The steamer
ran out of coal, and had to put into Nice. At last, in a heavy sea
which threatened to dash small craft to pieces, a fishing-boat
approached the "Carlo Alberto," containing some of the duchess's
most devoted friends. With great danger she was transferred to
it, and was landed on the French coast. She scrambled up slippery
and precipitous rocks, and reached a place of safety. But the delay
in the arrival of her steamer had been fatal to her enterprise.
A French gentleman in the secret had hired a small boat, and put
out to sea in the storm to see if he could perceive the missing
vessel. His conduct excited the suspicion of his crew, who talked
about it at a wine-shop, where they met other sailors, who had their
story to tell of a lady landed mysteriously a few hours before at a
dangerous and lonely spot a few miles away. The two accounts soon
reached the ears of the police, and Marseilles was on the alert,
when a party of young men, with their swords drawn and waving white
handkerchiefs, precipitated their enterprise, by appearing in the
streets and striving to rouse the populace. They were arrested, as
were also the passengers left on board the "Carlo Alberto,"--among
them was a lady who deceived the police into a belief that she was
the Duchesse de Bern.
Under cover of this mistake the duchess, finding that all hope
was over in the southern provinces, resolved to cross France to
La Vendée. At Massa she had had a dream. She thought the Duc de
Bern had appeared to her and said: "You will not succeed in the
South, but you will prosper in La Vendée."
She quitted the hut in which she had been concealed, made her way
on foot through a forest, lost herself, and had to sleep in the
vacant cabin of a woodcutter. The next night she passed under the
roof of a republican, who respected her sex and would not betray
her. She then reached the château of a Legitimist nobleman with
the appropriate name of M. de Bonrecueil. Thence she started in
the morning in a postchaise to cross all France along its public
roads.
She accomplished her journey in safety, and fixed May 24, 1832, as
the day for taking up arms. She made her headquarters at a Breton
farm-house, Les Meliers. She wore the costume of a boy,--a peasant
of La Vendée--and called herself Petit Pierre.
On May 21, three days before the date fixed upon for the rising,
she was waited upon by the chiefs,--the men most likely to suffer
in an abortive insurrection,--and was assured that the attempt would
fail. Had the South risen, La Vendée would have gladly joined the
insurrection; but unsupported by the South, the proposed enterprise was
too rash a venture. Overpowered by these arguments and the persuasions
of those around her, Marie Caroline gave way, and consented to
return to Scotland with a passport that had been provided for her.
But in the night she retracted her consent, and insisted that the
rising should take place upon the 3d of June. She was obeyed; but
what little prospect of success there might have been at first,
was destroyed by the counter-order of May 22. All who rose were at
once put down by the king's troops, and atrocities on both sides
were committed.
Nantes, the capital city of La Vendée, was hostile to the duchess;
in Nantes, therefore, she believed her enemies would never search
for her. She took refuge there in the house of two elderly maiden
ladies, the Demoiselles Duguigney, where she remained five months.
They must have been months of anguish to her, and of unspeakable
impatience. It is very possible that the Government did not care
to find her. She was the queen's niece, and if captured what could
be done with her? To set her free to hatch new plots would have
been bitterly condemned by the republicans; to imprison her would
have made an additional motive for royalist conspiracies; to execute
her would have been impossible. Marie Caroline, however, had solved
these difficult problems by her own misconduct.
Meantime the premiership of France passed into the hands of M.
Thiers. A Jew--a Judas--named Deutz, came to him mysteriously,
and bargained to deliver into his hands the Duchesse de Berri.
Thiers, who had none of the pity felt for her by the Orleans family,
closed with the offer. Some years before, Deutz had renounced his
Jewish faith and pretended to turn Christian. Pope Gregory XVI.
had patronized him, and had recommended him to the Duc de Berri as
a confidential messenger. He had frequently carried despatches of
importance, and knew that the duchess was in Nantes, but he did not
know her hiding-place. He contrived to persuade her to grant him an
interview. It took place at the Demoiselles Duguigney's house; but
he was led to believe that she only used their residence for that
purpose. With great difficulty he procured a second interview, in
the course of which, having taken his measures beforehand, soldiers
surrounded the house. Before they could enter it, word was brought
to the duchess that she was betrayed. She fled from the room, and
when the soldiers entered they could not find her. They were certain
that she had not left the house. They broke everything to pieces,
sounded the walls, ripped up the beds and furniture. Night came
on, and troops were left in every chamber. In a large garret, where
there was a wide fireplace, the soldiers collected some newspapers
and light wood, and about midnight built a fire. Soon within the
chimney a noise of kicking against an iron panel was heard, and
voices cried: "Let us out,--we surrender!"
For sixteen hours the duchess and two friends had been imprisoned
in a tiny hiding-place, separated from the hearth by a thin iron
sliding-panel, which, when the soldiers lit their fire, had grown
red hot. The gentleman of the party was already badly burned, and
the women were nearly suffocated. The gendarmes kicked away the
fire, the panel was pushed back, and the duchess, pale and fainting,
came forth and surrendered. The commander of the troops was sent
for. To him she said: "General, I confide myself to your honor."
He answered, "Madame, you are under the safeguard of the honor
of France."
This capture was a great embarrassment to the Government. Pity
for the devoted mother, the persecuted princess, the brave,
self-sacrificing woman, stirred thousands of hearts. The duchess
was sent at once to an old château called Blaye, on the banks of
the Gironde, the estuary formed by the junction of the Dordogne
and the Garonne. Tradition said that the old castle had been built
by the paladin Orlando (or Roland), and that he had been buried
within its walls after he fell at Roncesvalles.
In this citadel the Duchesse de Berri was confined, with every
precaution against escape or rescue; and the restraint and monotony
of such a life soon told upon a woman of her character. She could
play the heroine, acting well her part, with an admiring world
for her audience; but "cabined, cribbed, confined" in an old,
dilapidated castle, her courage and her health gave way. She was
cheered, however, at first by Legitimist testimonies of devotion.
Chateaubriand wrote her a memorable letter, imploring her, in the
name of M. de Malesherbes, his ancestor who had defended Louis XVI.,
to let him undertake her defence, if she were brought to trial; but
the reigning family of France had no wish to proceed to such an
extremity. The duchess had not come of a stock in which all the
women were _sans reproche_, like Marie Amélie. Her grandmother, Queen
Caroline of Naples, the friend of Lady Hamilton and of Lord Nelson,
had been notoriously a bad woman; her sister, Queen Christina of
Spain, had made herself equally famous; and doubts had already been
thrown on the legitimacy of the son of the duchess, the posthumous
child of the Duc de Berri. The queen of France, who was almost a
saint, had been fond of her young relative for her many engaging
qualities; and what to do with her, in justice to France, was a
difficult problem.
To the consternation and disgust of the Legitimists, the heroine
of La Vendée dropped from her pedestal and sank into the mire.
"She lost everything," says Louis Blanc,--"even the sympathy of
the most ultra-partisans of the Bourbon dynasty; and she deserved
the fate that overtook her. It was the sequel to the discovery of a
terrible secret,--a secret whose publicity became a just punishment
for her having, in pursuit of her own purposes, let loose on France
the dogs of civil war."
In the midst of enthusiasm for her courage and pity for her fate,
rose a rumor that the duchess would shortly give birth to a child.
It was even so. The news fell like a blow on the hearts of the
royalists. If she had made a clandestine, morganatic marriage, she
had by the law of France forfeited her position as regent during
her son's minority; she had forgotten his claims on her and those
of France. If there was no marriage, she had degraded herself past
all sympathy. At any rate, now she was harmless. The policy of
the Government was manifestly to let her child be born at Blaye,
and then send her to her Neapolitan home.
Her desire was to leave Blaye before her confinement. In vain she
pleaded her health and a tendency to consumption. The Government
sent physicians to Blaye, among them the doctor who had attended
the duchess after the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux; for it insisted
on having full proof of her disgrace before releasing her. But
before this disgrace was announced in Paris, twelve ardent young
Legitimists had bound themselves to fight twelve duels with twelve
leading men of the opposite party, who might, if she were brought
to trial, injure her cause. The first of these duels took place;
Armand Carrel, the journalist, being the liberal champion, while
M. Roux-Laborie fought for the duchess. The duel was with swords,
and lasted three minutes. Twice Carrel wounded his adversary in
the arm; but as he rushed on him the third time, he received a
deep wound in the abdomen. The news spread through Paris. The prime
minister, M. Thiers, sent his private secretary for authentic news
of Carrel's state. The attendants refused to allow the wounded
man to be disturbed. "Let him see me," said Carrel; "for I have
a favor to ask of M. Thiers,--that he will let no proceedings be
taken against M. Roux-Laborie."
Government after this became anxious to quench the loyalty of the
Duchesse de Berri's defenders as soon and as effectually as possible.
The duel with Armand Carrel was fought Feb. 2, 1833; on the 22d
of February General Bugeaud, commander of the fortress of Blaye,
received from the duchess the following declaration:--
Under the pressure of circumstances and of measures
taken by Government, I think it due to myself and to my
children (though I have had grave reasons for keeping my
marriage a secret) to declare that I have been privately
married during my late sojourn in Italy.
(Signed) MARIE CAROLINE.
From that time up to the month of May the duchess continued to
make vain efforts to obtain her release before the birth of her
child. It had been intimated to her that she should be sent to
Palermo as soon afterwards as she should be able to travel.
The Government took every precaution, that the event might be verified
when it took place. Six or seven of the principal inhabitants of
Blaye were stationed in an adjoining chamber, as is the custom
at the birth of princes.
A little girl having been born, these witnesses were summoned to
the chamber by Madame de Hautfort, the duchess's lady-in-waiting.
The duchess answered their questions firmly, and on returning to
the next room, her own physician declared on oath that the duchess
was the lawful wife of Count Hector Luchesi-Palli, of the family
of Campo Formio, of Naples, gentleman of the bedchamber to the
king of the Two Sicilies, living at Palermo.
This was the first intimation given of the parentage of the child.
A mouth later, Marie Caroline and her infant embarked on board a
French vessel, attended by Marshal Bugeaud, and were landed at
Palermo. Very few of the duchess's most ardent admirers in former
days were willing to accompany her. Her baby died before it was
many months old. Charles X. refused to let her have any further
care or charge of her son. "As Madame Luchesi-Palli," he said,
"she had forfeited all claims to royal consideration."
A reconciliation, however, official rather than real, was patched
up by Chateaubriand between the duchess and Charles X.; but her
political career was over. She was allowed to see the Duc de Bordeaux
for two or three days once a year. The young prince was thenceforward
under the maternal care of his aunt, the Duchesse d'Angoulême. The
Duchesse de Berri passed the remainder of her adventurous life in
tranquillity. Her marriage with Count Luchesi-Palli was apparently
a happy one. They had four children. She owned a palace in Styria,
and another on the Grand Canal at Venice, where she gave popular
parties. In 1847 she gave some private theatricals, at which were
present twenty-seven persons belonging to royal or imperial families.
Her buoyancy of spirit kept her always gay. One would have supposed
that she would be overwhelmed by the fall we have related. She
was good-natured, charitable, and extravagant. She died leaving
heavy debts, which the Duc de Bordeaux paid for her. Her daughter
Louise, sister of the Duc de Bordeaux, married the Duke of Parma,
who was assassinated in 1854. Their daughter married Don Carlos,
who claims at present to be rightful heir to the thrones of France
and Spain. She died in 1864, shortly after the Count Luchesi-Palli.
The Duchesse de Berri, who in her later years became very devout,
_d'après la manière Italienne_, as somebody has said, wrote thus
about his death:--
"I have been so tried that my poor head reels. The loss of my good
and pious daughter made me almost crazy, but the care of my husband
had somewhat calmed me, when God took him to himself. He died like
a saint in my arms, with his children around him, smiling at me
and pointing to heaven."
The duchess died suddenly at Brussels in 1870, aged seventy-one.
"And," adds an intensely Legitimist writer from whom I have taken
these details of her declining years, "had she lived till 1873, she
would have given her son better advice than that he followed."[1]
[Footnote 1: Mémoire de la Duchesse d'Angoulême.]
Without following the ins and outs of politics during the first ten
years of Louis Philippe's reign, which were checkered by revolts,
_émeutes_, and attempts at regicide, I pass on to the next event
of general interest,--the explosion of the "infernal machine" of
Fieschi.
It was customary for King Louis Philippe to make a grand military
promenade through Paris on one of the three days of July which
during his reign were days of public festivity. On the morning of
July 28, 1835, as the clock struck ten, the king, accompanied by
his three elder sons, Marshals Mortier and Lobeau, his ministers,
his staff, his household, and many generals, rode forth to review
forty thousand troops along the Boulevards. At midday they reached
the Boulevard du Temple. There, as the king was bending forward
to receive a petition, a sudden volley of musketry took place,
and the pavement was strewed with dead and dying. Marshal Mortier
was killed, together with a number of officers of various grades,
some bystanders, a young girl, and an old man. The king had not been
shot, but as his horse started, he had received a severe contusion
on the arm. The Duke of Orleans and the Prince de Joinville were
slightly hurt. Smoke came pouring from the third-story windows of
a house (No. 50) on the Boulevard. A man sprang from the window,
seized a rope hanging from the chimney, and swung himself on to
a lower roof. As he did so, he knocked down a flower-pot, which
attracted attention to his movements. A police agent saw him, and
a national guard arrested him. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his
face was covered with blood. The infernal machine he had employed
consisted of twenty-five gun-barrels on a stand so constructed that
they could all be fired at once. Happily two did not go off, and
four burst, wounding the wretch who had fired them. Instantly the
reception of the king, which had been cold when he set forth, changed
into rapturous enthusiasm. He and his sons had borne themselves
with the greatest bravery.
The queen had been about to quit the Tuileries to witness the review,
when the door of her dressing-room was pushed open, and a colonel
burst in, exclaiming: "Madame, the king has been fired at. He is not
hurt, nor the princes, but the Boulevard is strewn with corpses."
The queen, raising her trembling hands to heaven, waited only for
a repetition of his assurance that her dear ones were all safe,
and then set out to find the king. She met him on the staircase,
and husband and wife wept in each other's arms.
The queen then went to her sons, looked at them, and touched them,
hardly able to believe that they were not seriously wounded, and
turned away, shuddering, from the blood on M. Thiers' clothes.
Then, returning to her chamber, she sent a note at once to her
younger boys, D'Aumale and Montpensier, who were with their tutors
at the Château d'Eu. It began with these words: "Fall down on your
knees, my children; God has preserved your father."
Of course the Legitimists, and likewise the Republicans, were accused
of inspiring the attempt of Fieschi. The trials, that took place
about six months later, proved that the assassin Fieschi was a
wretch bearing a strong resemblance to our own Guiteau.
The funeral ceremonies of the victims of the infernal machine were
celebrated with great pomp. The affair led to a partial reconciliation
between the new Government and the Legitimist clergy; it led also
to certain restrictions on the Press and an added stringency in
the punishment for crimes of the like character.
On Jan. 31, 1836, the trial of the prisoners took place before
the Peers. The crowd of spectators was immense. There were five
prisoners, but the eyes of the spectators were fixed on only three.
The first was a man under-sized, nervous and quick in his movements.
His face, which was disfigured by recent scars, had an expression
of cunning and impudence. His forehead was narrow, his hair cropped
close, one corner of his mouth was disfigured by a scar, his smile
was insolent, and so was his whole bearing. He seemed anxious to
concentrate the attention of all present on himself, smiled and
bowed to every one he knew, and seemed well satisfied with his
odious importance.
The second was an old man, pale and ill. He bore himself with perfect
calmness. He seated himself where he was told to sit, and gave no
sign of emotion throughout the trial.
The third was utterly prostrated by fear.
The first was Fieschi; the second was called Morey; the third was
a grocer named Pepin.
The two last had been arrested on the testimony of Nina Lassave,
who had had Fieschi for her lover. The life of this man had been
always base and infamous. He was a Corsican by birth, and had been
a French soldier. He had fought bravely, but after his discharge he
had been imprisoned for theft and counterfeiting. He led a wandering
life from town to town, living on his wits and indulging all his
vices. He had even succeeded in getting some small favors from
Government; but finding that he could not long escape punishment
for crimes known to the police, he undertook, apparently without any
especial motive, the wholesale murder of king, court, and princes.
During his imprisonment his vanity had been so great that the officers
of the Crown played upon it in order to obtain confessions and
information.
The only witness against Morey was Nina Lassave, who insisted that,
Fieschi having invented the murderous instrument, Morey had devised
a use for it, and that Pepin had furnished the necessary funds
for its completion.
I give Louis Blanc's account of Fieschi's behavior on his trial,
because when foreign nations have reproached us for the scandal
of the license granted to the murderer of President Garfield on
his trial, I have never seen it remarked that Guiteau's conduct
was almost exactly like that of Fieschi.
"With effrontery, with a miserable kind of pride, and with smiles
of triumph on his lips, he alluded to his victims with theatrical
gesticulations, and plumed himself on the magnitude of his own
infamy, answering his judges by ignoble buffooneries, playing the
part of an orator, making pretensions to learning, looking round
to see what effect he was producing, and courting applause. And
some of those who sat in judgment on him _did_ applaud. At each
of his atrocious vulgarisms many of the Peers laughed, and this
laugh naturally encouraged him. Did he make a movement to rise,
voices called out: 'Fieschi desires to say something, Monsieur le
Président! Fieschi is about to speak!' The audience was unwilling
to lose a word that might fall from the lips of so celebrated a
scoundrel. He could hardly contain himself for pride and satisfaction.
His bloody hand was eager to shake hands with the public, and there
were those willing to submit to it. He exchanged signs with the
woman Nina who was seated in the audience. He posed before the
spectators with infinite satisfaction. What more can we say? He
directed the proceedings. He prompted or browbeat the witnesses,
he undertook the duties of a prosecuting attorney. He regulated the
trial.... He directed coarse jokes at the unhappy Pepin; but reckless
as he was, he dared not meddle with Morey. He had no hesitation in
accusing himself. He owned himself the worst of criminals, and
declared that he esteemed himself happy to be able to pay with
his own blood for the blood of the unhappy victims of his crime.
But the more he talked about his coming fate, the plainer it was
that he expected pardon, and the more he flattered those on whom
that pardon might depend."
The trial lasted twelve days, and very little was elicited about
the conspiracy,--if indeed there was one. Suddenly Pepin, whose
terror had been abject, rallied his courage, refused to implicate
Morey or to make revelations, and kept his resolution to the last.
One of the five prisoners was acquitted, one was condemned to a
brief imprisonment, and Morey, Pepin, and Fieschi were sent to
the block. Up to almost the last moment Fieschi expected pardon;
but his last words were to his confessor: "I wish I could let you
know about myself five minutes from now."
On the scaffold Morey's white hair elicited compassion from the
spectators. Pepin at the last moment was offered a pardon if he
would tell whence the money came that he had advanced to Fieschi.
He refused firmly, and firmly met his fate.
The next day the woman who had betrayed her lover and the rest was
presiding at a café on the Place de la Bourse, having been engaged
as an attraction!
After these horrors we turn with relief to some account of good
and noble women, the ladies of Louis Philippe's family.
After the murderous attempt of Fieschi the king lived under a continual
expectation of assassination. He no longer walked the streets of
Paris with his cane under his arm. When he drove, he sat with his
back to the horses, because that position gave less certainty to
the aim of an assassin. It was said that his carriages were lined
with sheet-iron. He was thirteen times shot at, and the pallid
looks of the poor queen were believed to arise from continual
apprehension. Her nerves had been shaken by the diabolical attempt
of Fieschi, and she never afterwards would leave her husband, even
for a few days. She stayed away from the deathbed of her daughter,
the Queen of the Belgians, lest in her absence he should be
assassinated.
Neuilly was the _home_ of the family, its beloved, particular retreat.
The greatest pang that Louis Philippe suffered in 1848 was its
total destruction by rioters. The little palace was furnished in
perfect taste, with elegance, yet with simplicity. The inlaid floors
were especially beautiful. The rooms were decorated with pictures,
many of them representing passages in the early life of the king.
In one he was teaching mathematics in a Swiss school; in another he
was romping with his children. His own cabinet was decorated with
his children's portraits and with works of art by his accomplished
daughter, the Princess Marie. The family sitting-room was furnished
with the princesses' embroidery, and there was a table painted
on velvet by the Duchesse de Berri. The library was large, and
contained many English books, among them a magnificent edition of
Shakspeare. The park enclosed one hundred acres. The gardens were
laid out in the English style. A branch of the Seine ran through
the grounds, with boat-houses and bath-houses for the pleasure
of the young princes,--and in one night this cherished home was
laid in ruins!
[Illustration: _QUEEN MARIE AMÉLIE._]
"All is possible," said Louis Philippe to a visitor who talked
with him at Claremont in his exile, "all is possible to France,--an
empire, a republic, the Comte de Chambord, or my grandson; but one
thing is impossible,--that any of these should last. _On a tué
le respect_,--the nation has killed respect."
Queen Marie Amélie was born in Naples in 1782. Her mother was a
daughter of Maria Theresa, and sister to Marie Antoinette. This lady
was not one who inspired respect, but she had some good qualities.
She was a good mother to her children, and had plenty of ability.
Of course she hated the French Revolution, and everything that
savored of what are called liberal opinions. Her career, which
was full of vicissitudes and desperate plots, ended by her being
dismissed ignominiously from Naples by the English ambassador,
and she went to end her days with her nephew at Vienna.
Marie Amélie used sometimes to tell her children how she had wept
when a child for the death of the little dauphin, the eldest son
of Louis XVI., who, before the Revolution broke out, was taken
away from the evil to come. She was to have been married to him
had he lived. When older, she had an early love-affair with her
cousin, Prince Antoine of Austria; but he was destined for the
Church, and the youthful courtship came to an untimely end. When
she first met her future husband, she and her family were living in
a sort of provisional exile in Palermo. The princess was twenty-seven,
Louis Philippe was ten or twelve years older, and they seem to have
been quite determined to marry each other very soon after their
acquaintance began. It was not easy to do so, however, for the
duke, as we have seen, was at that period too much a republican
to suit even an English Admiral; but the princess declared that
she would go into a convent if the marriage was forbidden, and
on Dec. 25, 1809, she became the wife of Louis Philippe.
No description could do justice to the purity and charity of this
admirable woman; and in her good works she was seconded by her
sister-in-law, Madame Adélaïde, and by her daughter.
"The queen," her almoner tells us, "had 500,000 francs a year for
her personal expenses, and gave away 400,000 of them." "M. Appert,"
she would say to him, "give those 500 francs we spoke of, but put
them down upon next month's account. The waters run low this month;
my purse is empty." An American lady, visiting the establishment
of a great dressmaker in Paris, observed an old black silk dress
hanging over a chair. She remarked with some surprise: "I did not
know you would turn and fix up old dresses." "I do so only for
the queen," was the answer.
The imposture, ingratitude, and even insolence of some of Marie
Amélie's petitioners failed to discourage her benevolence. For
instance, an old Bonapartist lady, according to M. Appert, one day
wrote to her:--
MADAME,--If the Bourbons had not returned to France, for the
misfortune of the country, my beloved mistress and protectress,
the Empress Marie Louise, would still be on the throne, and
I should not be under the humiliating necessity of telling you
that I am without bread, and that the wretched bed on which I
sleep is about to be thrown out of the garret I inhabit, because
I cannot pay a year's rent. I dare not ask you for assistance,
for my heart is with my real sovereign, and I cannot promise
you my gratitude. If, however, you think fit to preserve a life
which, since the misfortunes of my country, has been full of
bitterness, I will accept a loan. I should blush to receive a
gift.
I am, Madame, your servant, C.
When this impertinent letter was handed to the almoner, the queen
had written on it: "She must be very unhappy, for she is very unjust.
A hundred francs to be sent to her immediately, and I beg M. Appert
to make inquiries concerning this lady's circumstances."
In vain the almoner remonstrated. The only effect of his remonstrance
was that the queen authorized him to make her gift 300 francs if
he found it necessary. When he knocked at the door of the garret
of the petitioner, she opened it with agitation. "Oh, Monsieur!"
she said, "are you the Commissioner of Police come to arrest me
for my outrageous letter to the queen? I am so unhappy that at
times I became deranged. I am sorry to have written as I did to a
princess who to all the poor is good and charitable." For answer,
M. Appert showed her her own letter, with the queen's memorandum
written upon it. "There was no lack of heartfelt gratitude then,"
he says, "and no lack of poverty to need the triple benefaction."