46 The Chambre introuvable [1815

or parliamentary; while it was settled that the Chambers were to meet every year, that the deputies were to be unpaid, and that a payment of 300 francs in direct taxation was to be the qualification of the electors, the mode of election was not fixed; finally, there was no Press law. These three questions predominated in the parliamentary debates of the second Restoration. France remained divided, not into two parties, but into two nations. The partisans of the ancien rSgime declared war to the knife on the children of the Revolution. The generation of the past was determined to recover what it had lost; the new generation affirmed its right to keep what it had won.

Between these contending elements stood the King. It soon became apparent that he was resolved to govern. But at the beginning of his reign, in 1815, he had no military force. It was only after the troops on the Loire had been disbanded (July 16, 1815) that it became possible to form one. In the meantime the White Terror broke out in the south. It was directed against Bonapartists, Revolutionists, and Protestants, and led to rapine and murder. Hundreds of men fell victims, among them General Ramel at Toulouse, Marshal Brune at Avignon ; and the authorities were unable to protect the terrified people or to punish the criminals. While the Duke of Angouleme, not without the help of Austrian troops, put down disturbances which had been stimulated by clerical influence, and while the Allied troops kept order in the south and east, the general election was held (August 22). The King, in 1814, had retained the Imperial Chamber. Now, pending a new electoral law, he issued the provisional Ordinance of July 13, by which the Imperial system was continued for the election of the new Chamber; but the limit of age for electors was reduced, and the number of deputies increased to 402. The Prefects received instructions to use their influence at the elections in favour of moderation ; the King appointed the presidents of electoral colleges without reference to party; the censorship introduced in 1814 for minor publications was abolished. The Government remained impartial; but the Royalist policy of retaliation triumphed so completely that the terrorised Bonapartists and Republicans only obtained a few representatives; and the Chamber was named by the King the Chambre introuvable, because it surpassed the most sanguine expectations of the Royalists themselves.

Fouche, frightened at the extent of the Royalist victory, laid two memoranda before the Council, pointing out that civil war would be the outcome of reaction. They were made public with his connivance, and Talleyrand made use of this breach of trust to get rid of a colleague who now could only do harm. He was himself determined to resign, but he counted on a return to office, a calculation never realised while the Restoration lasted. In the darkest hour of the Monarchy he had committed himself to the conviction that France was both Royalist and Constitutional. The first verdict of the country under the restored

1815] The Ministry of Richelieu 47

dynasty put back the hand on the timepiece of history twenty-five years and indicated a reactionary France. This made a Talleyrand Ministry impossible. Foreign complications offered the pretext for his retirement. In response to the exacting terms of the Allies, Talleyrand declared proudly that Louis XVIII was the ally of the Powers, not their enemy: no right of conquest existed against the legitimate sovereign. Had not the Allies declared that the maintenance of the Treaty of Paris was the sole object of the recent war? But on September 20 his Ministry was forced to resign.

The Tsar held out hopes of better conditions should the Due de Richelieu become Prime Minister. When Richelieu hesitated, Alexander showed him the map drawn by Knesebeck, with the line depriving France of the circle of fortresses constructed by Vauban. Pozzo di Borgo, in agreement with the Tsar, then wrote the protest of the French Government against Russia's allies; and Richelieu reluctantly accepted office. He had lived out of the country for twenty-four years, had rendered brilliant service to the Tsar as Governor of Odessa, and had steeled his resolution in the struggle with Napoleon. He was a man of lofty character and admirable disinterestedness. In his youth he had been influenced by the physiocratic school, but of modern France he knew little. He stood outside the circle of Monsieur, nor did he share the violent prejudices of his class, although he had fought in the ranks of the Emigration. Not so his colleagues, the incompetent Vaublanc, Minister of the Interior, the Duke of Feltre, and Du Bouchage, whose appointments were concessions to the Ultras. Richelieu's supporters were Barbe-Marbois, Keeper of the Seals, Corvetto, Minister of Finance, and Decazes, to whom Louis XVIII gave the Ministry of Police. The Chamber met in October. It was chiefly composed of landowners, officials, and middle-class Conservatives. Its leaders were La Bourdonnaye, a former chouan and a fanatic; Bonald, whose doctrine of a hierarchical constitution of society rested on the assumption of the alliance between Church and State; the more sober-minded Corbiere, a lawyer, who tried, like Villele, to harmonise the demands of the Ultras with the necessities of practical politics. Neither the secret agent of Monsieur, Vitrolles, always employed and never trusted or rewarded, nor Chateaubriand, at once the most eloquent champion of Royalist passions and the advocate of constitutional right, played a conspicuous part in the House. Vitrolles intrigued; Chateaubriand influenced the Government and public opinion by ruling the Press with masterly power. The mainstay of the Ultras was Monsieur, who, in the words of Richelieu, although heir to the throne, never ceased to be a party chief. The Constitutional Royalists were represented by Laine, appointed President of the Chamber by the King, RoyerCollard, Councillor of State and head of the Education department, Sainte-Aulaire, Camille Jordan, and Count Hercule de Serre, who soon

48 The Chamber and its punitive measures [1815

came to the very front rank. He had fought under Conde; subsequently he became President of the High Court of Justice at Hamburg during the Empire, and now held a similar post at Colmar. Guizot, principal secretary in the Ministry of Justice, was excluded by his age from the Chamber. Pasquier, both as deputy and Minister, Barante, as a high official, represented the Imperial administrators, who accepted the Restoration. From the House of Peers, whose dignity had become hereditary in spite of the Royalists, twenty members were excluded for their action during the Hundred Days. The King replaced them by Napoleonic marshals and members of the revolutionary assemblies, as well as by Royalists.

The royal speech insisted on adherence to the Charter; the address of the deputies reminded the King of the necessity to punish. The presentation of three exceptional measures met this demand. The first gave the Government full powers to arrest and detain, without bringing them before the Courts, all offenders against the King, the royal House, and the safety of the State. The second punished with extreme severity those who menaced the King or public security. The third created tribunals — the Cours prevotales — which, presided over by soldiers, could deal summarily with political offenders. Although the powers of these Courts were not made retrospective, the King's prerogative of mercy was practically abolished.

In the debate on these measures, Royer-Collard and de Serre came to the front. They recognised the necessity of exceptional laws, but urged milder punishments and more exact definitions of offences. They opposed a law, passed by the Chamber and rejected by the Peers, for the temporary suspension of the security of judicial tenure, by the abolition of which the Ultras calculated that places would be filled by their adherents. From that moment, Royer-Collard, Pasquier, and their friends took counsel together on the tactics to be adopted against the party stigmatised by Richelieu as the White Jacobins.

On November 20 Richelieu signed the second Peace of Paris " with a sorrow amounting to despair." He had to submit to the surveillance of France by the Powers, to be carried out by their ambassadors. While the responsibility for the settlement with Europe rested on Richelieu, he was compelled to introduce the amnesty law. In his proclamation from Cambrai the King had excluded from amnesty the traitors of the Hundred Days only. The ordinance of July 24 sent nineteen persons before Courts-martial, which began their work with the death-sentence on Labedoyere. The fate of thirty-eight others was to be decided by the Chamber. Richelieu, supported by Royer-Collard, Pasquier, and de Serre, now proposed that these thirty-eight persons should be banished, but that all those not mentioned on Fouche's lists should be pardoned. The Ultras asserted the right of the Chamber in legislative matters to override the King's prerogative of mercy. The execution of Marshal

1815-6] Electoral projects 49

Ney, the escape of Lavalette, for which Decazes and Barbe-Marbois were held responsible, increased the thirst for vengeance. The language of La Bourdonnaye recalled 1793. He, Chateaubriand, Villele,and Corbiere, called for " categories " which, contrary to the will of the King, threatened 1200 persons with exile and confiscation.

In the course of this debate Richelieu spoke memorable words: " I do not understand your passions, your relentless hatreds. I pass every day by the house which belonged to my ancestors. I see their property in other hands and I behold in museums the treasures which belonged to them. It is a sad sight; but it does not rouse in me feelings either of despair or revenge. You appear to me sometimes to be out of your minds, all of you who have remained in France." Neither he, nor Royer-Collard and de Serre, who spoke in a similar sense and in favour of the royal prerogative of mercy, succeeded in preventing the exclusion of the regicides from the amnesty. The Cabinet was divided. Three Ministers acted with Monsieur. The instructions of Decazes to interpret the laws of exception in a merciful sense were evaded. In the army, the navy, and the administration, the opponents of Royalism were dismissed.

On December 18, 1815, Vaublanc introduced an impossible electoral law. Its object was to place the whole electoral machinery in the hands of the Executive. It was not unfairly described as a proposal under which Ministers and Prefects chose the electors, and the electors the deputies. The provision of the Charter under which a fifth part of the Chamber had to be elected annually was retained; but the limit of age for candidates was reduced from 40 to 25 years. These last two proposals caused the Ultras to reject the measure. It was then that Villele, deputy of Toulouse, ventured on a daring counter-proposal. He framed the only project of an electoral law which, during the Restoration, aimed at extending the right of suffrage to the people. This project advocated the reduction of the qualification for the franchise from 300 to 50 francs in direct taxation, thereby increasing the constituency from 100,000 to 2 millions, while insisting on a payment of 1000 francs in taxation as a qualification for the deputies, and maintaining the system of indirect election. Villele appealed to the royal ordinance of 1815, which suggested modifications of the Charter; he proposed that general elections should be quinquennial and that deputies should be 40 years of age. By this proposal the Ultras intended to increase parliamentary power at the expense of the Crown and in opposition to a Government which they considered hostile to their interests. They claimed a Ministry chosen from the ranks of their majority, and to uphold this majority they counted upon the combined votes of the landed gentry and nobility and upon their influence with the rural population. Their real aim was to weaken the power of the Liberal middle classes and to secure the domination of their party. The Constitutional Royalists supported the Government. During the Ministry of Talleyrand, Royer-Collard, being

C. M. H. x. 4

50 Demands of the Ultras [1816

consulted, had recommended direct elections and a qualification of 300 francs paid in direct taxation. Now he declared in a memorable speech that in France the King ruled and not the Parliament, and that the co-operation of the Chamber was only required for legislation and supplies. On the day when the Chamber could make or unmake Ministers, a Republic would be established. The Chamber in his view was a part of the King's Government. De Serre characterised Villele's project as an attack on the royal initiative, and insisted on the necessity of maintaining unimpaired the power of the Crown in a nation without an aristocracy and with shifting majorities. Democracy, he said, had ruined the country and was unwelcome to France.

Both Villele's and Vaublanc's proposals were lost in the Peers; and Corvetto then introduced the budget. To meet the enormous deficit, he proposed the sale of forests which had formerly been for the most part ecclesiastical and communal property and which now belonged to the State. The Right rejected the proposal and the claims of creditors of the Hundred Days, although the King had allowed them. They suggested payment by exchequer bonds of 100 francs, quoted at 60, which amounted to a declaration of partial bankruptcy.

The Government having recommended an increased payment to the clergy, the Right demanded for the Church a fixed revenue of 42 millions, the charge of the civil registers, and restitution of its confiscated property. De Serre characterised these proposals as monstrous and unconstitutional, and dissociated the clergy from claims which could not be raised without questioning the rights of property in every European State. Royer-Collard reminded the House that the King was pledged. The majority would not be convinced. Corvetto had to withdraw his proposal and to defer definite arrangements with regard to the debt. The session was closed in April, 1816. Shortly afterwards Vaublanc was replaced by Laine. This was a concession to the minority, whose leaders Richelieu henceforth consulted, and to the Powers, in whose name Wellington besought Louis XVIII to support the Ministry. The Allies feared that peace, the dynasty, and the solvency of France were at stake. The Tsar, Nesselrode, and Hardenberg advocated the dissolution of the Chamber. Richelieu felt this interference so humiliating that he declared he would rather be overthrown by Frenchmen than saved by foreigners.

Just then disturbances broke out at Lyons and Grenoble. Their importance was exaggerated by General Donnadieu and the local authorities; and they were repressed with needless severity. While the Ultras planned changes in the Charter and a Ministry of their own, the firm establishment of a moderate policy was the condition insisted on by the Powers, before reducing the army of occupation. Russia called attention to the infraction of the Charter by the votes on the budget and the amnesty law. Gradually, through reports from all parts of the country, through memoranda from Pasquier, Guizot, Decazes, the King