France History – The July Monarchy Part II

France History - The July Monarchy 2

Thus the July monarchy broke the danger of international isolation, which was a great advantage, even if it was paid with the necessary sacrifices to capture England: the suspension of the development of the Algerian enterprise, and the refusal of the Belgian throne, offered in a first time to a son of Louis Philippe. finding justification also in the affinities between the forms of government of the two countries: a new effective manifestation of it took place in 1834 in the Iberian questions, in support of the queens Maria of Portugal and Isabella of Spain, against the reactionary pretenders Don Miguel and Don Carlos. Thus the July monarchy broke the danger of international isolation, which was a great advantage, even if it was paid with the necessary sacrifices to capture England: the suspension of the development of the Algerian enterprise, and the refusal of the Belgian throne, offered in a first time to a son of Louis Philippe. finding justification also in the affinities between the forms of government of the two countries: a new effective manifestation of it took place in 1834 in the Iberian questions, in support of the queens Maria of Portugal and Isabella of Spain, against the reactionary pretenders Don Miguel and Don Carlos. Thus the July monarchy broke the danger of international isolation, which was a great advantage, even if it was paid with the necessary sacrifices to capture England: the suspension of the development of the Algerian enterprise, and the refusal of the Belgian throne, offered in a first time to a son of Louis Philippe.

In the meantime, the attempts to overthrow the new regime through insurrections and riots, which were mixed with attacks on the king (six in eleven years), succeeded in vain. The government faced the insurrectional attempts of the legitimists, headed by the adventurous Duchess of Berry (1832), the workers in Lyon (1831-1834), the republican ones in Paris (1832, 1834), and the action of the secret societies. which arose in large numbers with programs of political and social upheaval. The bourgeoisie defended its own positions and regulations: the action of the national guard, in agreement with the regular forces of the government against the riots, was matched in parliament by the conduct of the majority of the deputies, who fashioned severe laws of repression against secret societies and subversive propaganda. But the harmony established between the bourgeois political forces to combat the threats of subversion broke on the eternal problem of the authority and position of the sovereign in the constitutional kingdom. After the men of the ancient party of the movement had reduced themselves to the attitude of dynastic opposition with some republican overtones, debates raged among the political currents that had prevailed after the fall of Laffitte, and this all the more so since very early, in the May 1832, C. Périer died, that is the most authoritative and capacc government man. The followers, who even constituted a brilliant group of skills and ambitions (A. de Broglie, Thiers, Guizot, Molé, A.-J. Dupin, Duvergier de Hauranne), were divided according to two doctrines marked by the English constitutional life: the one for which the king had to reign and not govern, leaving power to the ministers designated by the parliamentary majorities, and the one for which the king, while remaining obedient to the tendencies of the majority, retained a certain freedom in the choice of ministers and a certain influence on government address. In short, parliamentary theory and constitutional theory were confronted.

According to Payhelpcenter, the struggles between the two conceptions and the ambitions of the men who personified them and who aspired to power, filled the first decade of the life of the July monarchy, complicated by the personal action of the king, who under good-natured and bourgeois appearances hid a high concept of their position and authority, and a strong will to make their mark on the government. The aim pursued by Louis Philippe was to wear down the most reluctant politicians in parliamentary struggles and subordinate them to the authority of the king, just as in the struggles of 1830-31 the men of the movement’s party had been worn down, so as to arrive at the result of forming, while maintaining formal respect for the Constitution, a government of loyal men.

The result seemed to have been achieved in the summer of 1840, when, after the wearing down of the last and most authoritative champion of the theory that the king reigns and does not govern, Adolfo Thiers, entangled and shipwrecked in the controversies with England about the Turkish crisis. Egyptian, the king was able to entrust power to the faithful and loyal Guizot, who under the nominal presidency of the ancient Napoleonic marshal N. Soult, was the soul of the government until 1848.

France History - The July Monarchy 2