France in the Nineteenth Century

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in the Nineteenth Century, by Elizabeth Latimer

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Title: France in the Nineteenth Century
Author: Elizabeth Latimer
Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14194]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ***

Produced by Robert J. Hall

[Illustration: EMPEROR NAPOLEON I.]

FRANCE
IN
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
1830-1890
BY ELIZABETH WORMELEY LATIMER
AUTHOR OF "SALVAGE," "MY WIFE AND MY WIFE'S SISTER," "PRINCESS AMéLIE," "FAMILIAR TALKS ON SOME OF SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES," ETC.

NOTE
The sources from which I have drawn the materials for this book are various; they come largely from private papers, and from articles contributed to magazines and newspapers by contemporary writers, French, English, and American. I had not at first intended the work for publication, and I omitted to make notes which would have enabled me to restore to others the "unconsidered trifles" that I may have taken from them.
As far as possible, I have endeavored to remedy this; but should any other writer find a gold thread of his own in my embroidery, I hope he will look upon it as an evidence of my appreciation of his work, and not as an act of intentional dishonesty.
E. W. L.
SEPTEMBER, 1892.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES X. AND THE DAYS OF JULY II. LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY III. LOUIS NAPOLEON'S EARLY CAREER IV. TEN YEARS OF THE REIGN OF THE CITIZEN-KING V. SOME CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 VI. THE DOWNFALL OF LOUIS PHILIPPE VII. LAMARTINE AND THE SECOND REPUBLIC VIII. THE COUP D'éTAT IX. THE EMPEROR'S MARRIAGE X. MAXIMILIAN AND MEXICO XI. THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS AT THE SUMMIT OF PROSPERITY XII. PARIS IN 1870,--AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER XIII. THE SIEGE OF PARIS XIV. THE PRUSSIANS IN FRANCE XV. THE COMMUNE XVI. THE HOSTAGES XVII. THE GREAT REVENGE XVIII. THE FORMATION OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC XIX. THREE FRENCH PRESIDENTS XX. GENERAL BOULANGER

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
EMPEROR NAPOLEON I CHARLES X LOUIS PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS DUCHESSE DE BERRY QUEEN MARIE AMéLIE LOUIS PHILIPPE, "THE CITIZEN KING" ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE LOUIS NAPOLEON, "THE PRINCE PRESIDENT" DUC DE MORNY EUGéNIE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN EMPEROR NAPOLEON III EMPRESS EUGéNIE JULES SIMON JULES FAVRE MONSEIGNEUR DARBOY, ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS PRESIDENT ADOLPH THIERS LéON GAMBETTA COMTE DE CHAMBORD PRESIDENT JULES GRéVY PRESIDENT SADI-CARNOT GENERAL BOULANGER

FRANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1830-1890.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES X. AND THE DAYS OF JULY.
Louis XVIII. in 1815 returned to his throne, borne on the shoulders of foreign soldiers, after the fight at Waterloo. The allied armies had a second time entered France to make her pass under the saws and harrows of humiliation. Paris was gay, for money was spent freely by the invading strangers. Sacrifices on the altar of the Emperor were over; enthusiasm for the extension of the great ideas of the Revolution had passed away; a new generation had been born which cared more for material prosperity than for such ideas; the foundation of many fortunes had been laid; mothers who dreaded the conscription, and men weary of war and politics, drew a long breath, and did not regret the loss of that which had animated a preceding generation, in a view of a peace which was to bring wealth, comfort, and tranquillity into their own homes.
The bourgeoisie of France trusted that it had seen the last of the Great Revolution. It stood between the working-classes, who had no voice in the politics of the Restoration, and the old nobility,--men who had returned to France full of exalted expectations. The king had to place himself on one side or the other. He might have been the true Bourbon and headed the party of the returned émigrés,--in which case his crown would not have stayed long upon his head; or he might have made himself king of the bourgeoisie, opposed to revolution, Napoleonism, or disturbances of any kind,--the party, in short, of the Restoration of Peace: a peace that might outlast his time; et après moi le déluge!
But animals which show neither teeth nor claws are seldom left in peace, and Louis XVIII.'s reign--from 1814 to 1824--was full of conspiracies. The royalty of the Restoration was only an ornament tacked on to France. The Bourbon dynasty was a necessary evil, even in the eyes of its supporters. "The Bourbons," said Chateaubriand, "are the foam on the revolutionary wave that has brought them back to power;" whilst every one knows Talleyrand's famous saying "that after five and twenty years of exile they had nothing remembered and nothing forgot." Of course the old nobility, who flocked back to France in the train of the allied armies,