Hello everybody and welcome to Grey History. In this special guest episode I have a treat for you. David Montgomery, host of the Ciecler podcast, has joined us before and I can pretty much guarantee he will do so again in the future. That's because David runs a fantastic French history podcast focused on the century between 1814 and 1914. Put differently, he covers the era between Napoleon's downfall and the First World War. Most recently, David has been exploring the July Revolution of 1830 and the dramatic upheavals of the Bourbon Restoration. It is a fascinating period of French history and one that sits very nicely alongside the era that we explore here. The Ciecler, which means "century" in French, is a fantastic show and in many ways it is quite similar to Grey History. David's commitment to research is phenomenal. The storytelling is excellent and I thoroughly enjoy the podcast. In fact, I'm completely up to date. So if you're looking for another long form French history podcast, especially one covering an era closely connected to the French Revolution and Napoleon, I highly recommend the Ciecler. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts and it's spelled S-I-E-C-L-E. And with that, enjoy Episode 1 of the Ciecler. I want to introduce you to a man named Louis Stanislas Xavié, born to a wealthy French family in Paris. In some senses, Xavié's story is typical of the tumultuous times in which he lived. He was a man with a dream. It was a dream that gradually consumed his life. He spent his free time making plans. He'd talk about it late at night while drinking with his friends. He'd talk about it with total strangers. All Xavié needed was a chance. The chance he deserved and he'd be able to do huge things. Finally, after years of interminable waiting, Xavié got his chance handed to him on a silver platter and he promptly blew it. The story of how Xavié blew his big chance over the course of a year is the perfect introduction to this series, which will tell the bigger story of 100 years of French history from 1814 to 1914. Xavié's blunders are thematically appropriate to France's century before World War 1, which includes lots of major blunders. But the biggest reason why he's appropriate is because you probably know Xavié by his pseudonym, or maybe by his more famous relatives. Xavié's grandfather was King Louis XV of France. His older brother was King Louis XVI. And 23 years after his brother and sister-in-law were hauled off to Parisian guillotines, Louis Stanislas Xavié was enthroned as King Louis XVIII of France. A throne he'd managed to set for less than a year before being chased out of the country. This is the Cieclat. Episode 1, The Return of the King. On April 24, 1814, Louis landed in Calais to a rapturous reception. It was the first time he had been in France for more than two decades when he fled the increasingly radical French Revolution in the middle of the night, disguised as an English businessman. Two years later, Louis's brother, King Louis XVI, was guillotined. Much to Louis' disappointment, the revolution did not fade away, but endured. When France finally abandoned the Republic, it was not to restore Louis as France's rightful king, but to crown the phenomenally successful Corsican General Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor. But Louis had endured, too, living in exile all over Europe and maintaining his claim to be King Louis XVIII of France. It wasn't the grandest existence, but it had paid off. In 1814, the armies of Europe had invaded France and forced Napoleon to abdicate the French throne for exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. After some debate, the victorious Allied powers of Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia had decided that Louis was their best bet to rule France after Napoleon. And when Louis returned, it seemed like the French people thought so, too. His ship was met by a cheering crowd, flattering speeches, chance of long lived the King, a public banquet, and a song composed in his honor calling him the desired one, vying to show off their love and support of the would-be king, the citizens of Calais unhorsed Louis' carriage and hauled him through the streets themselves. But we shouldn't be misled, as Louis was, by the crying, cheering, and carriage pulling crowds. Many of the French were doubtlessly enthusiastic for the return of the Bourbons, Louis' family. But for many more, the true return to be celebrated was not of Louis, but of peace. France in 1814 had been engulfed in war and revolution for more than 20 years, first under the revolutionary government, and then under Napoleon. More than one million French people had died in these wars, out of an 1814 population of around 29 million. That's as if 11 million modern Americans were to die violently. Estonchingly, historian Robert Tooms estimates that more than one in three of all boys born between 1790 and 1795 were killed or wounded. And few of these soldiers had gone willingly. In the world's first mass war, Frenchmen had been conscripted into the armies of the Republican Empire by the millions, dragged to barracks, roped together, and sent a broad to fight and die. Meanwhile, those who had remained home were often in rough shape, too. Even ignoring the theft, destruction, violence, and rape brought about by that spring's campaign, when the allies invaded France and forced Napoleon to abdicate, the quarter century of war had been a national disaster for huge swaths of France's economy. Inflation had destroyed savings, and taxes had taken much of the rest. Recent years had seen severe food shortages and unemployment. The English blockade had ruined France's great sea trade, while Napoleon's continental system kept it ruined. The fall of the ports, in turn, caused the collapse of regional economies which had lived off their activity. Louis and his relatives recognized this war-wearingness and tried to capitalize on it. In the crucial final days of Napoleon's empire, when Louis's return was not a foregone conclusion, his nephew made the bourbon pitch to a bordeaux crowd. Quote, "No more wars, no more conscription, no more oppressive taxes. It worked. On this promise of peace and low taxes, the bourbons drew popular acclaim that persuaded leaders in France and other European countries to return them to power. It was tantalizingly easy to imagine that the French peoples acclaim came from genuine love and not desperate self-interest." These demands of the people for peace and prosperity were always going to be tricky to satisfy for Louis. But among all the celebrations of his return to Paris and formal coronation, the early fault lines that would drive Louis out of the country less than a year later were already evident. The days of Louis' absolutist ancestors were long gone, if they had ever truly existed. In 1814, the King of France could not simply order his kingdom around on a whim. Rather, Louis would have to balance four major different interest groups if he wanted to keep his hard-won throne. Many of them in direct conflict with each other. The first group is the common people who we've already discussed. France was largely rural and agricultural at this point, and the masses of peasants desperately wanted relief from the depredations of war, conscription, and associated taxes. The peasants also wanted to protect a key gain from the revolution. The abolition of the taxes and special rights that the Ancien-Régime nobility and church had possessed. The Ancien-Régime is French for the Old Regime, and is used to refer to France's government before the revolution. More prosperous and educated than France's peasants and urban poor were the country's bourgeoisie, many of whom had done quite well under the republic and empire. Politically, many of them wanted a liberal constitution for France, one that restricted some of the King's powers and vested them in assemblies elected by affluent Frenchmen like themselves. Economically, a driving issue for this group were the beyond messional. The land confiscated from the clergy and nobility by the revolutionary government and sold to the people of France. The bourgeoisie and some wealthier peasants were terrified that the bourbon restoration would take the land they had purchased years ago and return it to its prior owners. This was no small issue. Around one French family in 10 had bought some of this confiscated property, and more than 10% of the country's land changed hands because of the seizures. The bourgeoisie would feel any threat to the beyond, Nassio-no.
very deeply. That brings us to the people who were threatening the beyond Nassio Nome, the ultra-royalists. These were the nobles and clergy who had opposed the revolution from the beginning. Many had been driven into exile like Louis. But unlike the conciliatory Louis historian Philip Mansell writes, "The ultra-royalists were out for revenge, violence, and blood. They wanted to undo as much of the revolution as possible and punish those responsible for it to the greatest extent possible." They also wanted their share of power and wealth, offices, appointments, and privileges. Not only were these ultra-royalists a significant force in many parts of rural France, but they included members of the King's own family, including his brother Charles, the Compt d'Artois or Count d'Artois. Last and by no means least, was the French Army. France had been at war for two decades, and so had a huge number of soldiers under arms and veterans who had served, around 500,000 active troops when Louis first took the throne. These soldiers wanted material things, including salaries and pensions, but they also wanted respect from the new regime. These armies had won victory after victory until very recently, and France's veterans wanted their triumphs and sacrifices recognized. With all these demands, tombs rights, it is hard to see how the bourbons could have avoided disappointing their supporters and antagonizing their opponents. Indeed, Louis would proceed to upset every one of these groups over his disastrous first year on his ancestral throne. A state of affairs that would be watched very closely on the island of Elba. One of the most widely quoted quips about the restoration is that the restored bourbons had "learned nothing and forgotten nothing since the revolution." That's not quite fair. The original quote was a criticism of the bourbons in the 1790s. By 1814, Louis, at least, had indeed learned many lessons from the revolution. For example, unlike his ancestors, Louis accepted that his power would be limited to a degree. It was, Louis said, "the spirit of the age." As Louis moved toward Paris in 1814, the old imperial senate offered him the French crown. On the condition that he accepted a constitution, they wrote. Louis refused this constitution, but offered up his own, the Charter, which included elected assemblies and guarantees of rights. Louis was willing to be limited, but insisted that any constitution would have to come from the king down, not from the people up. This gambit paid off. At least at first, the French people and elites and the foreign armies still occupying France, all broadly accepted Louis and his Charter. As established, Louis was crowned on July 8, 1814. If Louis had forgotten nothing, he was at least willing to forgive. There were no purges. Political prisoners were freed. Former imperial officials were kept on, even in Louis's cabinet, where a majority of ministers had served the republic or Napoleon's empire. Of course, this leniency infuriated the ultra-royalists, who wanted their revenge and counter-revolution revolution. With Louis' brother at court, the king managed to ward off any organized opposition from the right. But the altars made trouble for Louis indirectly. Out in the provinces, they held ostentatious religious festivals, asserted old social privileges, and pressured owners of the beyondness you know, to sell them back. Other lessons Louis had learned were of mixed value. For example, his older brother had been forced to call the Estates General in 1789, kicking off the French Revolution because of France's bankruptcy. Louis was obsessed with the dangers of budget deficits and made balancing the French budget a top priority. This was good for the state's credit, but ticked off almost everyone else. For example, to cut costs, Louis cut the French army from 500,223,000 men, creating in historian Monroe Price's words, a reservoir of almost 300,000 demobilized, often unemployed, and therefore often discontented ex-soldiers. Especially dangers were the more than 10,000 fervently bonapartist officers who were forcibly retired on half pay. Meanwhile, if the budget was to be balanced, then France needed tax revenue. To Louis backtracked on his relative's promises to abolish Napoleon's high taxes, the taxes would stay, including the hated excise taxes on wine, tobacco, and salt. Taxes Louis' nephews had specifically promised to dump. On hearing the news, Bordeaux, the first city to proclaim Louis as king, rioted against him. Adding insult to injury, the one part of the budget he didn't cut, was the part of the budget that went to his own household. We must have splendor, outward show, Louis said, defending a spending request of 40 million francs and a 548 million franc budget on himself. That's indicative of the restoration's biggest blunders. On policy, Louis tried to steer conciliatory course, but he kept undermining his own concessions with symbolic acts that turned huge swaths of his own people against him. For example, Louis abolished France's tricolor flag in favor of the old bourbon white flag. He refused to wear the emblem of the Legion of Honor, the award Napoleon had created for France's bravest soldiers. He abolished Napoleon's elite imperial guard and created new units, staffed with overpaid nobles. He showered honors on emigres and brought back the old elaborate court ceremonies of the ancien regime. Even his name caused offense. Louis the 18th implied that he had been king not after Louis the 16th, but after Louis the 16th son, who had died a prisoner at age 10 without ever governing. Dating his regime to 1795 and not 1814 was felt as an insult by many of the people who had served other regimes during the last 19 years, and so rights. On the streets of Paris, you could buy a caricature of a man reading a blank book titled "History of the 19 glorious years of the reign of Louis the 18th." All those provocations and blunders might have amounted to nothing if it weren't for the man currently bored out of his mind, playing in light and dictator on what he described as an "operetta kingdom" off the coast of Italy. Napoleon Bonaparte had certainly not forgotten the years when he was a master of France and Europe. Neither could Louis, when the new king finally returned home to the palace of Compiénia, in which he had spent part of his boyhood, he found the palace decor was covered by a swarm of ends and bees and eagles, the emblems of the palace's last occupant, waiting for him were old friends, and a bevy of Napoleon's top generals. Louis kept men like Marshall Ne, Marshall Jordon, and Marshall Victor around and on his staff, flattering their egos. Similarly, while he would slash the army's ranks, he kept hundreds of thousands of Napoleon soldiers under arms. When Louis cousin Louis Filippe returned to France in August, he encountered some of Napoleon's elite imperial guard, now scattered across the country as common soldiers, while emigrate nobles and Swiss mercenaries protected the king. The officers cried "long live the king," but very few of the soldiers took it up. Louis Filippe's sister noted. They were cold and silent. On Elba, Napoleon read French newspapers chronicling Louis' rocky start and received visitors assuring him that the French people and army were secretly still loyal to him. Back in Paris, Louis got his own information about rising unrest from police reports, private letters, and even opposition newspapers. But Louis' attempts to mitigate this through a modest charm offensive came to little in the end. Napoleon slipped away from his prison on February 26, 1815, and landed in France on March 1, with 1142 men and two cannons. Though the once and future emperor would reclaim his throne with ease, this was by no means guaranteed. For all the discontent among the army and some segments of the population, large numbers of the French people remained royalist. Thus each monarch had the support of around half of France, Mansell estimates. The royalist half included the region of Provence in which Napoleon had landed. Faced with popular opposition, the invasion could have ended before it began. But Napoleon darted away from the coast, along the Alps, and soon reached friendlier territory. There, the first soldiers sent to stop him switched sides, a pattern that would repeat itself all the way to Paris. Through the town of Lafrey, Napoleon faced down a larger battalion and won them over not with clever maneuvers, but with charisma. What you old rascal, were you about to fire in your emperor? Napoleon later claimed he asked the assembled soldiers. As army after army sent to capture the emperor.
joined him instead, Louis lost his nerve and fled. The household guard Louis had created at such cost and political opinion melted away during the retreat, and the king slipped across the border into Belgium. He was, Mansell says, almost completely alone, with only a discredited reputation for company. This was, however, not the end for Louis Stennislass' Aviai, nor for King Louis XVIII. Instead, over the course of the most famous 100 days in history, he'll win his throne back through luck and a pair of victories, his own in the field of diplomacy, and the Duke of Wellington's on the field of Waterloo. I hope you'll join me next time for that story as we plunge forward into the Cieclah. In the meantime, if you like what you've just heard, I hope you'll support this podcast. The easiest way you can do it is to spread the word to your friends, in person and on social media. The online home of the Cieclah is the Cieclah.com, thesie.com. It's also at the Cieclah on Twitter and Facebook. If you're a fan and you have the means, I'd also greatly appreciate financial support, so I can afford to spend more time researching and writing episodes. There's two ways to do this. At the Cieclah.com/support, I've got a link to a Patreon where you can pledge a monthly donation of as little as $1. That URL also has a link to an Amazon wish list of books about French history that I hope to use to research future episodes. I've already bought more than two dozen books for the show so far, and let me tell you, it adds up. If you'd like to show your support, that wish list lets you ship them straight to my door. Thank you again for listening. Feel free to ask me questions on Twitter at the Cieclah, or by email at
[email protected]. And don't forget to come back in two weeks time for the Cieclah Episode 2, The Hundred Days.
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