Episode 47 Emerging Political Battles

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

According to Desan, our most important political labels date from the French revolution. The terms “left” and “right” stem from the seats assigned to the revolutionary Jacobins and the more monarchist Girondins in the National Assembly.* Likewise early concepts of conservatism and liberalism also date from the French revolution. Louis XVI’s brother the Count of Artois (who succeeded Louis XVIII as Charles X) and his supporters were instrumental in the emergence of conservatism on the world stage. Prior to the French revolution, there was no need to define conservative beliefs because they were taken for granted.

In the early 19th century thee included a belief in

• divine providence as a force underpinning social cohesion and morality (in the eyes of the Catholic church, revolution was a sin).
• the necessity of preserving traditional values and beliefs (through uniform religious beliefs) to guarantee cultural integrity
• a need for hierarchical power because men were too wicked to be free.

Contrariwise 19th century French liberalism supported a constitutional monarchy working in concert with a legislature elected by men with property. Lafayette (exiled during the revolution for supporting a constitutional monarch) returned to Paris under the restoration and resumed leadership of the National Guard. Lafayette and other liberal leaders represented elite elements of the middle class. They rejected full equality because they blamed the lower classes and their rabble rousing for the terror.

Louis XVIII tried to work with the liberals until the assassination of a relative who was second in line for the throne. In response, the king fired the moderates in his government, introduced heavily press censorship electoral reforms that increased the power of the ultra-royalists.

Louis XVIII died in 1824. When Charles X took the throne, he paid emigres for land they lost during the revolution, closed down newspapers and reduced the power of the Chamber of Deputies.

This forced liberals, republicans and Bonapartistes (including Lafayette) to practice their politics in secret underground organizations. Ironically this occurred simultaneous with a revival of Napoleonism and the ubiquitous appearance of medals, plates and snuff boxes with his image – along with rumors he was about to make a comeback. In 1823, Count Emanuel De Las Cas, Napoleon’s companion in St Helena, published a 16-volume memoir of the emperor’s life.

Ongoing Revolutionary Struggle in France

France would go on to have three more revolutions in 1830, 1848 and 1871.*

Following 1814, the rise of a new middle class enabled a class-based society to replace feudalism, even though France was much slower at industrializing than Britain. In 1815, nobles still owned one-fifth of French land.

Under Louis XVIII, France enjoyed a constitutional monarch with the king appointing an upper Chamber of Peers and male property owners electing a Chamber of Deputies. Out of France’s total population of 35 million, only 100,000 men qualified to vote and only 10,000 qualified to run as deputies.

Royalists in the south of France unleashed the White Terror to harass and murder (300 total) republicans and supporters of Napoleon. Louis XVIII purged more than 56,000 pro-Napoleon troops and put more that 5,000 on trial. More than half of them were convicted. The general who supported Napoleon’s return from Elba faced the firing squad.

During the 1830 revolution, the king fled, and eventually the liberal constitutional monarch Louis-Phillipe I took the throne.

Following the 1848 revolution, the French people elected Napoleon’s nephew Louis Napoleon-Bonaparte as president, but he abolished the republic to declare himself emperor.

*See French Revolution: The Thermadorian Revolution and the Gilded Youth

** Timeline

• 1814-1830 Restoration of French monarchy
• 1830-1848 Liberal constitutional Monarchy
• 1848-1852 Second Republic
• 1852-1870 Second Empire

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149417