Three Glorious Days
The July Revolution
PDF of the Study Guide: Here
Introduction:
It is midnight on the night of July 28th, 1830 in Paris. The King has introduced a series of controversial ordinances, and rebellion has broken out throughout the city. The future of France is in flux, and the future will be determined in the next few days. The July Revolution is heavily dependent on the previous generation of revolutionary action, with people’s feelings about those events heavily influencing their actions now. Just by the way, I thought the French revolution section would be 500 words long, I have no idea why I thought I could do that.
The July Revolution:
When Louis XVI was crowned King of France in 1774, the country was not in a good state. The glory days of Louis XIV were long in the past, and France had suffered from 59 years of maladministration and stagnation under Louis XV (yes, every king in this story is named Louis). The French state was suffering from an enormous amount of debt, its administrative and legal systems were a mess, and there was an incredible amount of inequality between the different segments of the population. All of these problems were exacerbated by France’s nonsensical taxation system, which levied the vast majority of its taxes on commoners, generally those with the least ability to pay. At the same time, the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment was sweeping Europe, bringing ideas of rationality and progress to the forefront of thought. Much of Europe had spent the last 50 years modernizing and reforming their governments, and France, despite being an intellectual centre of enlightenment thought, was being left behind. This offended the emerging intelligentsia and middle classes, at the same time the common people were oppressed by poor harvests, continuing feudal exploitation, and the aforementioned over-taxation.
Louis XVI and his advisors were not insensible to the state of the kingdom, and made various attempts to reform parts of the system, but the reforms were limited and resisted at every phase by nobles. In addition, his costly support of the American Revolution further worsened France’s financial situation, and it approached default. After reform attempts by the royal prerogative and the assembly of notables both failed, he called for the Estates General, an assembly comprising representatives of France’s nobility, clergy and commoners. However, archaic electoral structures resulted in the commoners lacking power, and almost as soon as the estates convened, they declared themselves an independent legislature — the national assembly — and demanded that they be recognized as having a major role in France’s government. Despite the king’s attempt to stop this, the assembly was soon joined by representatives of the other orders as well, and they swore an oath to remain assembled until they had drafted a new constitution for France. The national assembly assembly would convene until 1791, and would completely reform France’s legal and administrative systems, end almost all remaining feudal structures, significantly reduce the power of the catholic church, and create a new constitution for a new constitutional monarchy, which would have a legislature which would be granted many powers, and which would be elected, but only by the roughly richest 25% of French men.
While this was happening, the people of Paris also began to flex their own political power, first storming the Bastille prison, a symbol of royal tyranny. In response to such disruptions, revolutionary leaders led by the Marquis de Lafayette formed the National Guard, a militia which would at various points have a role both in waging and clamping down on revolutionary uprisings. Even more significantly, a few months later thousands of Parisian women marched on the king's palace in Versaille, forcing both him and the national assembly to return to Paris, where they would be in the hands of the people.
Through the course of this transformation, different factions emerged in French politics. On the right (the terms right and left were actually invented in this period) there were reactionary royalists who wanted a return to the previous regime. These were concentrated in the high nobility and clergy, and many fled the country, becoming emigrés. On the left were true revolutionaries, who generally believed in true democracy, aggressive dechristianization, and other radical reforms. In between were moderates, who favoured reform, but who wanted to divide between the powers of the king and the assembly, and were generally skeptical of the voice of most common people. For now, this group held the greatest sway.
However, sensing the heat of the situation, and sceptical of the anticlerical measures of the assembly, Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette attempted to flee the country in 1791, which ended in disaster when they were spotted and returned to Paris. This, along with the first election to the new legislative assembly and the Champ de Mars massacre, where petitioners against the monarchy were fired upon by soldiers, resulted in a leftward shift in French politics. The new dominant faction were the Girondins, who were aggressive advocates, among other things, for war with the other powers of Europe, in particular Austria and Prussia, who had recently been engaging in provocative criticisms of the attacks on the monarchy. The war initially went poorly for the French, who had lost a large chunk of their officer corps to emigration, and their armies pushed into French territory. In response to all of this, on August 10th a new rebellion was launched in Paris, and the monarchy was defeated, overthrown, and abolished. A new government was created, the national convention, which would be elected by universal suffrage, although turnout was comically low. Shortly thereafter, the invasion was turned back at the Battle of Valmy, sparing the government from immediate distraction. The dominant faction in the national convention was the Mountain, led by Maximillian Robespierre. This government created a new constitution, enshrining universal male suffrage, significant redistribution of wealth, and dramatically expanded civil rights, though the constitution would never actually be implemented. In addition, they abolished slavery in France’s colonies and were largely successful in France’s wars against foreign powers and domestic rebellions.
However, In the wake of the August uprising, many prisoners were held in France’s jails, from political opponents to common criminals, and fear of conspiracy from these prisoners resulted in the September massacres, in which over 1000 prisoners were killed by National Guards and Parisian mobs. This proved a forerunner to the next two years, where politics would be defined by increasing levels of violence being perpetrated on the government's opponents. First, this was against royalists, including the king himself. After his death, the king’s brother, in exile in England, declared himself to be King Louis XVIII. Then, gradually a larger and larger group of the Political opponents of the government were fed to the guillotine, in a situation known as the reign of terror. This included the Girondins, many revolutionaries in good standing, and countless factions both to the Mountain’s left and right. Overall, the terror resulted in as many as 45,000 deaths. It created a great sense of paranoia, and some leaders started conspiring against the government once again. On the 27th of July, called the 9th of Thermidor in the new revolutionary calendar, a group of them rose up, deposed and executed Robespierre and his allies, and formed a new government called the Directory, led by five directors, most prominently Paul Barras.
The directory was corrupt and largely non-ideological, and alternately suppressed uprisings from both the left and the right to maintain power. It was not nearly as brutal as the previous government but also engaged in significant suppression and violence against its opponents. It was ultimately able to end France’s debt crisis by simply repudiating much of the public debt, but it was widely unpopular and clung to power only by the continued support of the military, which had grown very powerful as a result of France’s wars with much of Europe. These had gone relatively well, with significant territories added to the French Republic, but many enemies remained, and there was no end in sight. At this point, much of the fighting was along the Rhine boundaries, with a smaller theatre in Italy. However, one young general from Corsica believed that the Italian theatre could be the key to victory, and was able to receive an appointment to lead the campaign after leading the defence of the Directory in one of the many uprisings against it. Once there, he proved correct, leading a spectacular series of campaigns which saw him defeat every force the Austrians sent against him, often significantly outnumbered. He crossed the Alps into Austrian territory, and the Austrians, France’s largest enemy, sued for peace. Napoleon Bonaparte had finally ended the war, bringing peace to continental Europe for the first time in five years.
Napoleon:
In the wake of the end of what was called the War of the First Coalition, Napoleon was extremely popular and used that popularity to get the Directory to let you launch an invasion of Egypt. This went poorly, and upon hearing that France had gotten embroiled in another war in Europe, he abandoned his troops there and returned to France. He found a volatile situation, with a plot forming to replace the unpopular directory with a new government. He placed himself at the head of this conspiracy and launched a coup on the 18th of Brumaire of year VIII (9th of November 1799, for those of you still using the reactionary calendar). His performance on the day was almost laughably bad, but the coup was successful, and he implemented a new government called the consulate, with himself as first consul, and all but completely sidelined the original planners of the coup.
His first action was to lead an army across the Alps to fight the Austrians, crushing them at the Battle of Marengo, and ending the war. With the signing of the Treaty of Amiens with Britain in 1802, there was a year of peace in all of Europe for the only time between 1792 and 1814. Over the course of his early leadership, he embarked on an ambitious program of domestic reform, creating France’s modern civil law code, its first central bank, public education system, the Legion of Honor and countless other lasting institutions. He also negotiated the Concordat of 1801, finally healing the wounds between revolutionary France and the catholic church, and bringing a permanent end to the rebellion in the Vendée. However, his attempts to reintroduce slavery in the French colony of Santo Domingo ended with the death of 35’000 French soldiers and the independence of the new nation of Haiti. Having mostly had success with his reforms, he crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804 on the providential date of December 2nd.
Much of the remainder of his reign was dominated by war. Following his coronation as emperor, his execution of the nobleman Louis D’Eghien, and ultimately his additional taking of the Iron Crown of Lombardy as King of Italy, the war started with Austria, Russia and the UK. This ended in a crushing victory over the Austrians at Austerlitz, matched by the destruction of the French navy at Trafalgar. A few months later Prussia joined the war, but Napoleon won again at Jena-Auerstedt and Friedland, leaving the UK as his sole opponent. Shortly thereafter he invaded Spain but became bogged down fighting against Guerrilla forces. Seeing this weakness, Austria tried once again to go to war but was crushed as well. All these victories added massive territory and wealth to the French empire and its client states, but also overextended and weakened Napoleon’s Grande Armée.
After Russia began to resist Napoleon's efforts to cut off Britain's trade, he launched an invasion. This was a military, and frankly humanitarian catastrophe, resulting in roughly 1'000'000 deaths. Following this failure Napoleon retreated through Europe, suffering a major defeat at Leipzig, but winning many victories as well, even in this desperate state. The writing was on the wall though, and when he returned to France, a group of politicians led by Maurice de Talleyrand forced him to resign and surrender to the Allies to spare France from destruction. The Allies sent him to the island of Elba. He briefly returned and took back control of France for one hundred days, before his final defeat at Waterloo, and he was shipped to Saint Helena, a more remote island, dying in 1822.
Bourbon restoration:
Talleyrand and his allies arranged for Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, to take over. After 23 years, the Bourbon dynasty returned to France. He and his brother Charles were notably welcomed in by the National Guard, who had pledged their support to them. Initially, Talleyrand attempted to get Louis XVIII to accept a constitution created by the legislature, but instead, he promulgated what was called the Charter of Government, a document which clearly emphasized the king’s powers and his divine mandate. Despite Louis’ royalist views, the charter granted freedom of speech, the press and religion, although all somewhat limited, equality before the law, and many of the more practical reforms which had occurred since the revolution, such as the Napoleonic code. It also provided for an elected legislature, albeit one with a far restricted suffrage compared even to the national assembly.
In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat, the Allies occupied France. France was spared overly harsh terms of surrender, largely due to Talleyrand’s skilful negotiation. These terms became somewhat harsher after the hundred days, and included a significant indemnity and several years of occupation. However, France maintained its pre-revolution territory. ultimately allowed it to regain its place among the great powers of Europe, joining the alliance system forged at the postwar Congress of Vienna.
Louis XVIII was generally moderate in his politics and personality and maintained a relatively stable balance of power over time, never angering any faction so much as to provoke revolution. The first election to the chamber of deputies returned a far-right ultraroyalist majority, which tried to pass laws allowing for violent attacks against their political opponents and the return of much of the property confiscated from nobles during the revolution. The king soon dissolved this body, and the next election returned a more moderate body. The country gradually shifted to the left, among other things significantly expanding press freedom, led by a liberal minister named Élie Decazes. This trend ended with the election of former radical revolutionary Henri Grégoire as a deputy and the assassination of the king’s son the Duc De Berry by a radical Bonapartist, both of which offended the opinion of both the voting public and the king. This precipitated the election of 1820, which produced another right-wing majority, led by new prime minister Joseph de Vilelle. The liberal opposition felt dispirited, doubly so after France intervened to stop a liberal mutiny in Spain. They planned several conspiracies to overthrow the government, but all came to nought, and an even more reactionary chamber was elected in 1824. Shortly thereafter Louis XVIII died of gangrene, becoming (spoiler alert) the last French monarch ever to die while still on the throne.
After this, the first French king in 214 years not to be named Louis ascended to the throne: Charles X, the younger brother of Louis XVI and XVIII. Charles was the leader of the ultraroyalist faction, an extremely devout catholic, and opposed all liberalizing reform. He believed that his brother’s tendency to compromise had resulted directly in his execution, and had even led counterrevolutionary revolts in the Vendée during the revolution. At his coronation, he engaged in many of the now archaic seeming rituals which had been passed down from before the revolution, rankling many. Initially, he ruled with a chamber in line with his views and passed various reactionary reforms, including restitution for lands seized from the nobility, harsh censorship measures, and the death penalty for the desecration of catholic churches. However, his reform agenda was widely unpopular and began to run into resistance from the chamber of peers, so he called for a new election in 1827. Around the same time, he received heckles from a few National Guards, which still existed as a large militia, mostly made up of members of the middle class, during a review, so he ordered the entire Paris National Guard disbanded, creating a large number of armed young men with a grudge against him.
Despite Charles’ confidence that the election would strengthen his position, the election resulted in an opposition victory, with liberals allying with moderate conservatives to remove Villele as Prime Minister. Charles frustratedly appointed the moderate Vicomte de Martignac in his place, who he did not like at all. Martignac’s government eased restrictions on freedom of the press and attempted to reduce the level of government interference in elections. The liberal opposition was growing throughout this period, starting new newspapers and organizations. A fringe but increasingly popular position was that Charles’ distant cousin Louis Phillippe should replace him. However, after 18 months on the job, Charles decided that was quite enough of that, and dismissed Martignac in favour of the ultraroyalist Jules de Polignac. Polignac lacked the confidence of the chambers, so Charles dissolved parliament again.
However, the consent of the chambers was required to pass a budget, so parliament would have to be recalled. However, in the hopes of riding to election victory on the back of military triumph, Charles launched an invasion of Algiers, which France had been in a diplomatic spat with for some time. This invasion was largely successful, beginning 132 years of colonial exploitation because a king wanted to win an election. However, despite this victory, the election produced an even stronger liberal majority, organized by an effective electoral apparatus led by the Doctrinaire faction.
The revolution begins:
The king was outraged by this result, and he and his minister slowly began to consider what means might be employed to reverse it. Ultimately they settled on signing the four ordinances, a series of decrees, which dissolved the new chamber before it even got the chance to sit, restricted suffrage even further, and imposed new harsh censorship measures. The ordinances were sent to Paris in the morning edition of the government paper Le Moniteur Universel on the 26th of July. This resulted in outrage in many sectors of Parisian society, from the industrial workers to the journalists to the middle class. Riots and protests broke out in many quarters of the City, smashing the streetlights. A group of opposition journalists and lawyers, believing the ordinances to be illegal, met and agreed to publish a declaration of resistance the next morning.
Chunks of the city were occupied by Parisian mobs, but despite this obvious eventuality, the preparation of royal forces was extremely poor. The military and police forces in the capital had not been placed on alert, no plans had been established for the situation. Leading the Paris garrison was Auguste de Mormont, who attempted to secure the city, but who has been able to do so yet. The police attempted to seize unauthorized newspaper presses, but this has also not proceeded according to plan, with the declaration of resistance being freely accessible to all Parisian readers. How this will end is in the will of the people, the government and the opposition, as determined by all of you. It is midnight on July 27th, and the future is unknown, but all signs point to revolution, whether successful or not.
Political system of France:
France’s political system is governed by the aforementioned charter of government, which is like a constitution, except it isn’t a constitution, granted as it was by the king rather than by the people. Under the charter, the king has far less power than the absolute might theoretically wielded by the monarchs of the Ancien Regime, but far more than that granted to, for example, the modern president of the US. He has the power to command the armed forces, declare war and peace, conduct diplomacy, appoint most public offices, and generally has the power to create ordinances with the force of law. Notable disputes exist about whether the king has the power to appoint cabinet ministers even without the consent of chambers, and just what he is allowed to decree. The monarchy is passed down by agnatic primogeniture, and because of France’s maintenance of Salic law, women are excluded from the position. Currently the next in line is Charles’ son Louis Antoine, followed by his grandson Henri, the son of the assassinated Duc de Berry.
France’s legislature is heavily based on the British system. Standing in for the House of Commons was the chamber of deputies, which is elected by popular vote. However, the vote is limited to the roughly 1% of French men who pay the most taxes. Further strengthening the elite nature of the body is the law of the double vote, allocating 40% of the seats to be elected by an even smaller group of voters. Despite these restrictions, the chamber of deputies had been trending more and more liberal in recent elections, with disgruntlement at Charles’ rule being felt by all sectors of society. Standing in for the House of Lords was the chamber of peers, which was made up of members appointed by the king. Together, these bodies were responsible for voting on laws proposed by the cabinet.
Paris:
Paris in 1830 is a rabbit’s warren of streets and alleys. The wide boulevards that define Paris today were largely built by Napoleon III’s government, which would not come to power for 18 more years. These narrow streets are perfect for the construction of the most iconic symbol of the July Revolution: the barricades. Constructed out of furniture, cobblestones, and whatever other materials are available, these are essentially short walls which span the width of a street, these are perfect defensible points and easily constructible. They will be the main tactic used by the insurgents to control areas of Paris. However, many of the familiar landmarks of Paris, including the Louvre Museum, the Hotel des Invalides, and the Palais Royale. The political centre of Paris is the Tuileries Palace, the usual home of Charles X and the centre of his government. It is also the headquarters of the Paris Garrison.
Detailed Map of Paris
In 1830, Paris was home to approximately 750,000 people and is the centre not just of France’s government, but also its culture, economy, and intellectual life. Its inhabitants are from all social stratums and engaged in all manner of jobs, but in particular, it is home to many working-class labourers, artisans, and students, who will be manning the aforementioned barricades. It is the second largest city in Europe, and one of the major cities of the world. It is also, at least by the standards of the time, highly cosmopolitan, and home to people from throughout France and the world. However, in the summer, the city gets very hot, and many of its more well off inhabitants have departed the city to other, cooler locations. This includes the King, who is in his summer estate in Saint-Claud, on the outskirts of the city. Like large cities throughout space and time, the residents of Paris tend to be to the left of France’s population overall and are the centre of French liberalism, radicalism, republicanism, and proto-socialism.
Political factions:
Here are some of the factions which were at play in French politics in 1830. There is a great deal of overlap between many of these groupings, and of course every member of the factions believes something slightly different but this will help you understand what tendencies people in different groups:
Bonapartists: This refers to people who support the claim of the Bonaparte dynasty, currently represented by Napoleon II to the French throne. They are a relatively small faction, and have little to no influence on popular politics.
Conservatives: This word of course means many things at many different points in history, but broadly in 1830s France conservatives believed in strong prerogatives for this king, support for the catholic church and the former nobility, and generally opposed expansion of suffrage or civil rights.
Doctrinaires: This is a major faction in the liberal section of French politics. They are a group of centrist moderates who believe in limits to the king’s power, the rule of law, and free-market economics. They are generally sceptical of expanding the vote too much and are in principle generally highly anti-revolutionary
Legitimists: This refers to people who support the claim of Charles X and his descendants to the French throne.
Liberals: Like Conservatives, the word means different things at different points, but at this point, in general people called liberals to support popular sovereignty, civil liberties, private property, and equality before the law.
Orleonists: This refers to people who support the claim of Louis Philippe and his descendants to the French throne. This is becoming an increasingly popular position among the French opposition
Republicans: These are those who favour the abolition of the monarchy entirely, and for France to become a republic. This is a fringe position among the political elite, but enjoys some support among common Parisians:
Ultra-royalists: This is the most extreme conservative faction, led by Charles X. They are opposed to almost all restrictions to royal authority, support the supremacy of the catholic church, and generally support a state closer to the one that existed before 1789.
Newspapers:
Paris has a thriving publishing culture, and newspapers are an important avenue to organize political action and strategy, which is why a large part of the four decrees was imposing harsher censorship. However, despite the decrees, attempts to actually stop the printing have been largely unsuccessful, and many theoretically illegal newspapers are still widely available. Among the most important newspaper are the following:
Le Moniteur: this is the official newspaper of the government, and naturally has a strong ultraroyalist slant, as its editorial direction is largely dictated by the whims of Charles X
Le Constitutionnel: this is the premier doctrinaire paper, whose frequent contributors include François Guizot. It refused to carry the declaration of resistance, reasoning that violating an illegal law would be hypocritical.
Le National: this is a newer and more strident paper then Le Constitutionnel, founded in 1829 with funds from Talleyrand, and employed journalists such as Adolphe Thier and Armon Carral. Unlike Le Constitutionnel, it did publish the declaration of resistance.
There are many other papers in the city, of most ideologies, though more radical ideas have been subject to many rounds of censorship. What the people hear in the papers will have a great impact on their actions.
Written By Kai Schärer
