HI 172 – Modern France
Restoration and Revolution
Napoleon’s Defeat
• Spring 1814: Napoleon abdicates
– Exiled on Elba
• Restoration: Louis XVIII (brother of Louis XVI)
– Fails to buy support of military
– Not everyone wanted a return to Old Regime, not
even the Allies, who wanted a stable but
contained France
100 Days
• Napoleon returns to southern France from
Elba
• Gathers popular and military support
• Defeated in Waterloo (Belgium today) by Duke
of Wellington, 1815
• Napoleon sent to Saint Helena… dies there
Restoration
• Ultras
– arch conservatives
• Doctrinaires
– bridge between above and below
• Liberals
– Wanted 1789-1792 model
• Republicans
– Anti-royalists
Some incontrovertible gains
of Revolution
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•
•
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End of venality of office
Written constitutions
Some sort of representation
Land redistribution
– Church land works its way downward in economy
– Wealthy buyers of land break up and sell to
peasants
– Peasants do well
The de facto model?
• Revolution and various kinds of liberal
authoritarianism
• Rural economic growth
• Bumpy for manufacturing sector
– England’s industrial revolution
Bourbons, 1815-1830
• Louis XVIII (1815-1824)
– Lacked charisma
– Careened between political currents
• Charles X (1824-1830)
– Ultra conservative
– Sought to revive Old Regime rituals
– No tolerance for liberals
1830
• Tensions between liberals and conservatives
• Spring 1830: Liberals reject ultra conservative
ministry of Polignac
• Charles X clamps down
– Press restrictions
– Election reform
• Provokes revolution
July Days,
les trois glorieuses
• Radicals join liberals to reject reforms
• Soldiers sent in to put down barricadeuprisings often sided with rebels
• Charles X flees to England
July Monarchy
• duc d’Orléans takes over the throne
• Tensions now shift
– Ultras are sidelined
– Struggle between liberals, republicans, and
socialists
Algeria
• To gain popular support, Charles X invades
Algiers – beginning of what would be 130
years of colonial rule in Algeria
• Will return to this in later lecture
François Guizot
• Historian
• France’s history: long rise of freedom and
middle classes
• Liberal:
– For freedom AND order
• Economic freedom: enrichissez-vous!
• Education to discipline masses
Socialism(s)
• Utopian
– Saint-Simon
• Communitarian
• Production driven communities, politics should be
adapted to it
– Producers vote
• Oppression and war would be counter to productive
interests
Socialism(s)
• Utopian
– Charles Fourier
• Phalansteries
– Created communities where individual ‘types’ are combined
for maximum (1620 people per community)
– High wages, higher for unappealing jobs
– Use of desire to generate productivity
– Sexual desire, intellectual curiosity… unleashed passions
channeled into a harmonious community…
» Touch of Rousseau and points to 1968
Louis Blanc
• 1840: The Organisation of Labour
– Worker cooperatives
– Expand suffrage
1848
• February revolution: 2nd Republic
– Against Guizot’s inflexibility
– Bourgeois driven (expand vote)
– Radicals support ‘banquets’
• Spring
– Tensions between all groups
– Creation of National Workhouses
• June Days
– Closing of workhouses
– Repressive turn
Two paths through
19th century France
• For a discussion of Tocqueville and Hugo, you
might find this review of Hooper’s Les
misérables helpful.
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/
people/staff_index/walton/the_missing_half_
of_les_mis.pdf