The King in Exile - The Story of Louis XVIII
Count of Provence in his youth
As Chateaubriand said: "The count understood his age and was a man of his time." But times had to change.
— Emma Demmester
— Emma Demmester
The monarch, whose power was brought by the people's revolution. A king without a kingdom. A wanderer, to whom even the allies did not dare to give shelter. For monarchists, he was a liberal, and for republicans, he was the personification of reaction. The right accused him of indecisiveness, gentleness and mercy towards enemies, the left considered him the inspirer of white terror.
Cautious in politics, he was intemperate in his personal life, finding solace in women, wine and gourmet food. Phenomenon king, French paradox king stories.
Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence and King Louis XVIII.
Who was he for France?
I will just tell you a story - and let the reader choose the appropriate answer for himself.
Family affairs
All can kings?
This only happens in songs. And monarchs have their troubles.
The King of France, Louis XV, for example, did not have a very good family life. The king was a terrible libertine and, with his wife alive, was drowning in the love caresses of his favorites, and he did not disdain courtesans.
As if in punishment for his sins, heaven did not give him heirs. Only one son of the king, Louis Ferdinand, survived to adulthood. Now all the hopes of the dying Bourbon dynasty were connected with him. And the Dauphin did not disappoint!
Count of Provence and Duke of Berry as children
A zealous Catholic and an exemplary family man, Louis Ferdinand made the royal court happy with as many as five boys. Two died in childhood. The remaining trinity had to fight for the throne.
Our hero, Louis-Stanislas-Xavier and Count of Provence, born in 1755, had unenviable prospects in this struggle. In line for succession to the throne, he was ahead of his older brother, the Duke of Berry. Directly behind Louis-Stanislas was the younger, Charles-Philippe, Comte d'Artois.
The Duke of Berry grew up as a weak and sickly child. He was not promised a long life - to the secret joy of the brothers, who were not burdened by the norms of Christian morality. They coveted the throne from a young age! Even at the cost of the death of a weakling brother ...
But fate deceived them. By the age of fifteen, the Duke of Berry was noticeably stronger. Healthy fullness, noticeable in the figure of the heir to the throne, meant the retreat of diseases.
In 1770, the Dauphin married the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette. The future of the dynasty was getting stronger, at the court they expected a new addition of the royal family.
The Comte d'Artois in 1773
But instead of gains, there were losses.
In 1774 the old king dies. The Duke of Berry succeeds him, under the name of King Louis XVI. But the royal couple still have no children! Rumors spread around the court...
These rumors were fueled by the brothers of the young king. Without realizing it, they shook the age-old foundations of the Old Order. What kind of dirt they poured on their elder brother and his wife!
Marie Antoinette got it the most. A pervert cheating on an impotent king with countless lovers and lesbian mistresses! Dirty "Austrian", a disgrace of the highest kind!
The Count of Provence did not hesitate to express his own malice. But anger was a manifestation of impotence. Royal surgeons, through simple machinations, managed to return Louis XVI to male solvency.
Between 1778 and 1785, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her husband three children - one girl and two heirs. The king's brothers were now pushed to the sidelines. Louis-Stanislas has fallen to fourth place in the line of succession to the throne.
Throne dreams?
Now they are nothing more than an illusion. The ambitions of the Count of Provence were trampled, it seemed, by the very course of history.
Revolution!
The economic and political crisis of the spring of 1789, which engulfed France, sounded for the royal power, if not a funeral alarm, then a wake-up call. But the highest aristocracy was far from unity. The crisis grew into a revolution. And if Louis XVI, to the best of his ability, tried to understand the logic of events and save the dynasty, then his brothers ...
They thought only of their own interests. The younger, Comte d'Artois, immediately fled the country. Despising the "upstarts" from the third estate and hating the liberals, the count did not expect anything good from the revolution. For him, she was a rebellion of the "mob", that's all!
The Count of Provence behaved smarter.
He always had a certain moderation and foresight of a politician, but he clearly lacked the decisiveness of a true monarch. Remaining in France, the Count of Provence awaited the fall of Louis XVI, hoping to take the throne. But he did not take active steps, did not dare to become a true leader of the monarchist opposition. The revolution beckoned him with the prospect of owning the throne, but frightened him with the unpredictability of the paths.
In the end, fear prevailed over the will to power. The Count of Provence decided to run away.
As a fugitive, the count proved to be more successful than the politician.
He fled from Paris virtually at the same time as the king, but the count's cortege was carried west by other roads. The calculation of the Count of Provence turned out to be more correct - if Louis XVI was caught in Varennes and brought to Paris in disgrace, then the count took refuge in the Austrian Netherlands, having crossed the border at Longwy. With what contempt he tore the republican tricolor cockade from his hat!
Royalist emigrants gathered in West German Koblenz. Surrounded by "his" Count of Provence pretty bold. Now he made himself out to be the leader!
Together with his younger brother, Louis-Stanislas announced the creation of an emigrant army.
However, he entrusted most of the organizational routine to the Comte d'Artois. The "leader" himself limited himself to declarations and manifestos, in the work on which he took part. The most notable of these documents is the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Austro-Prussian army. In it, the duke threatened the revolutionaries with "military reprisal and complete destruction" if even a hair fell from the head of King Louis XVI.
The audacious manifesto turned into a disaster for the current king of France. He and his family ended up in prison. The Revolutionary Convention soon abolished the monarchy altogether.
Liquidation on "paper" eventually turned into physical violence. This story is well known and there is no need to go into details here.
Let's limit ourselves to dry facts - King Louis XVI and his wife ended up on the guillotine, and their young son died in prison. The centuries-old French monarchy was decapitated in every sense.
But isn't that what the Count of Provence wanted?
King in exile
And here is the chance! And here it is power, here it is the taste of triumph!
Immediately after the death of his unfortunate nephew in the dungeons of the Temple, the Count of Provence declared himself king.
The king is dead, long live King Louis XVIII!
On June 23, 1795, the newly-minted monarch addressed the people of France. "To fall at the foot of the throne" - that was the call to the "lost children." At the same time, the good news of the restoration of the monarchy was sent to all European courts.
What a farce! Its absurdity was obvious even to many emigrants. In France, the new king had almost no influence. Most of the French did not even know about the call to “fall to the throne”. Even European monarchs were in no hurry to support Louis.
Obviously, for him this violation of the principle of aristocratic solidarity was the most severe blow.
Only Catherine II decided to unconditionally recognize the new status of the Count of Provence. The Empress even promised to help the royalists with troops. But promises remained promises...
From other European capitals good News did not have. The Austrians, Prussians, Spaniards and British sought peace with the revolutionaries. The ambitions of the emigrant king did not worry Europe too much. His rights to the throne were not disputed, but the royal status never received official recognition.
The half-recognized king was slowly sinking into exile. He almost did not go to the front of the revolutionary wars, lived on handouts from the outside, moved away from his wife, whom he openly cheated on.
He tried to settle in Russia - but Louis was “asked” from there after the rapprochement between Emperor Alexander and Napoleon.
Since 1808, Hartwell Castle, immersed in English fogs, has become the residence of the unlucky exile.
Marie Josephine, wife of the Count of Provence. They didn't have children
Life in England changed Louis XVIII.
His character softened - hatred of the revolution was steadily fading away, the ideal of a constitutional monarchy already looked in his eyes as a reasonable compromise.
Unlike the Comte d'Artois, Louis no longer lusted for blood and vengeance. He was ready for negotiations, even wrote letters to Napoleon, which apparently remained unanswered. Shalilo health - gluttony and immoderate craving for wine testified to the development of diabetes. The star of the exiled king was waning.
Return of the King
Louis XVIII was to go down in history as a complete loser, a tragicomic hero of a protracted farce.
But history decreed otherwise.
The victories of the Russian army over Napoleon, the roar of guns at Leipzig and Arcy-sur-Aube gave hope to the old French aristocracy. With the entry of the armies of the coalition into Paris, the dream of the return of the old order found support in reality.
And now the French Senate is calling Louis to the throne - but with the condition of adopting the Constitution. Royalists are furious - defeated usurpers of the divine right to the throne cannot dictate terms to His Majesty!
But the era of "power from God" is gone. It is impossible to turn back time - and Napoleon's victors understood this well. The establishment of a moderate regime in France was a demand for security and lasting peace in Europe.
Soft-bodied Louis had no major objections to this, but could not free himself from the influence of his radical brother. Negotiations on the form of government dragged on, however, with the mediation of Alexander I and the active participation of Talleyrand, the royalists were persuaded to make concessions.
On May 2, 1814, at the Château Saint-Ouen, Louis XVIII signed a declaration of intent to adopt the Constitution.
On May 3, the king entered Paris at the confluence of the crowd, surrounded by a magnificent retinue.
King in office
Louis XVIII greeted the people with restrained dignity. The subjects did not show open aggression, but the alienation was great. Along with cries of "Long live the king!" shouts of "Long live the Imperial Guard!" and "Long live the National Guard!".
The restoration was completed, but its foundations remained fragile.
The adoption of the Constitutional Charter on June 4, 1814 was supposed to strengthen the power of the king.
This compromise act restored the power of the Bourbons in the state, but kept the key gains of the revolution for the people. Fair taxation, civil liberties and class equality, the inviolability of property redistributed in favor of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry - these are the principles on which the social structure of the new France rested.
"Second Restoration" and white terror
Already in March of the following year, the Restoration regime underwent its first severe test. And failed it with a bang!
The landing of Napoleon in France in March 1815, the lightning collapse of the army "faithful" to Louis, the transition to the side of the "usurper" Marshal Ney ...
The nightmare of revolution was repeated for the royalist party. Louis fled to Belgium and returned to France only after Waterloo. As for the first time - in the dubious role of the "convoy" of foreign armies.
The king did not want to take revenge, but the monarchist radicals easily broke his weak will. They declared the constitutional charter "the brainchild of madness and darkness." The July Ordinance, aimed at "cleansing" the country from Napoleon's supporters, marked the beginning of the "White Terror".
After 1789, terror as a phenomenon was not new to the French. His characteristic features were repeated from time to time, whether he was Jacobin or monarchist, left or right. "Extraordinary" courts, dubious procedures, purges of the army, police and other security agencies, a wide range of extrajudicial repressions.
In a short time, the number of indictments exceeded 10. Marshal Ney was sentenced to death. In the south of France, the struggle between royalists and Bonapartists acquired the features of a religious vendetta. The country was split along countless fault lines, and the attempt of the “far-right” to return the state to the times of the old order threatened to destroy this state in the fire of civil war ...
No matter how soft-hearted King Louis was, he could not be denied a sense of proportion.
By the autumn of 1816 he had taken real steps to curb the terror. The dissolution of the Peerless Chamber, a virtual closed royalist club, sobered up the most malicious right-wing radicals. Acting moderately but consistently, the king brought into power figures from the camp of liberals and moderate royalists. The liberal cabinet of the Duc de Richelieu succeeded in obtaining the withdrawal of foreign "limited contingents" from France, while the cabinet of Elie Decase eased the pressure on the democratic opposition and limited the censorship of newspapers.
Was it the long-awaited "thaw"?
Portrait of Louis XVIII by Gerard. 1815
If so, it didn't last long.
On February 13, 1820 (what an evil coincidence!) the craftsman Louvel lay in wait in Paris for the Duke of Berry, the son of the Comte d'Artois. Right at the exit from the opera house, the aristocrat received a long knife in the ribs.
It was a cruel public execution. And what a reason for the royalists! Immediately they achieved tougher censorship and revision of electoral laws.
The reaction went on the offensive again, but it was by no means a victorious march.
Opposition resistance took dangerous forms. Then it seemed that the authorities went to the complete restoration of the old order, and the most radical fighters against the regime joined the Carbonari movement.
This mysterious militant organization included many conspiratorial cells. Several tens of thousands of militants were scattered throughout France. They attracted radical youth and more moderate Bonapartists into their ranks, among them there were many military men, both retired and active. The Carbonari, with their ubiquitous conspiracies, terrified the royalists, but all rebellions invariably failed. However, the very presence of an extensive network of militants in the country already looked symptomatic.
The resistance of the minor liberal opposition in the Chamber of Deputies remained symbolic. The liberals protested loudly but hopelessly against the intervention of French troops in support of the Spanish Bourbons.
In the elections in February 1824, the liberal faction received only 19 deputy mandates. It was a triumph of the reaction, however, a very doubtful triumph - after all, the "stability" of the royalist course was achieved by the results of the recent terror, strict censorship and the suppression of dissenters.
British cartoon of French intervention in Spain
"Farewell, my children..."
And what about Louis?
Who was the king in this intensified political game?
Alas, his time was coming to an end. Diabetes made itself felt. At the first session of the new chamber, he could barely stand on his feet. By the summer of 1824, the king had given up badly. The Comte d'Artois no longer concealed his impatience to receive the crown upon the death of his brother.
The denouement came in the fall.
On the morning of September 11, Ludovic could not get out of bed - gangrene began to develop on his legs. “Take off his shirt,” commanded the court physician Portal. “Mr. Portal, my name is Louis XVIII, and you should have said “Take off the shirt from His Majesty.” He still had dignity!
In the early morning of September 16, 1824, Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, Count of Provence and King of France, Louis XVIII expired, or, simply put, died.
His last words were: “Farewell, my children. May the Lord be with you all!”
At the bedside of the deceased, his brother, heir to the royal throne, sobbed.
But were those tears sincere?
List of sources and literature:
1. Cherkasov P. P. Rulers of France. XIX century. - M. Lomonosov. 2019.
2. Morozova E. V. Louis XVI. The misunderstood king. - M .: Young Guard, 2018.
3. Chudinov A. V. The old order in France and its collapse. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2017.
4. Chudinov. A. V., Bovykin D. Yu. French Revolution. – M.: Alpina non-fiction, 2020.
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