France’s July Revolution ousted the Bourbon king Charles X and his Ultraroyalist advisers because of their failure to accept the principles of civil equality and other ideals established by the revolution of 1789.
After the long, exhausting years of the Napoleonic Wars, the French people passively accepted the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814-1815.
July revolutionists manning the barricades in Paris.
During the 1820’s, the monarchy began to drift to the right at the same time that the French nation was moving to the left. Only the highly restricted suffrage and various changes to election laws enabled the factions of the right to maintain a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. By July of 1830, the political situation had reached the breaking point, and a brief, relatively bloodless revolution overthrew the Bourbons and established a new, more liberal monarchy.
Political tensions intensified in 1824, when Louis XVIII
It was not until the moderates and one wing of the conservatives went into opposition, however, that Charles was driven from the throne. Two royal policies had the effect of alienating all political opinion except that of the extreme right. One was a marked trend toward enlarging the power of the nobility; the other, a trend toward increasing clerical influence in government. By 1829-1830, many conservatives who had loyally supported Louis XVIII and his Charter of 1815
Soon after Charles’s coronation, the Chamber of Deputies, controlled by the Ultraroyalists, passed laws to indemnify the émigré nobles for the loss of their property during the revolution. To finance this indemnity, interest paid on government bonds was reduced from 5 to 3.5 percent, and the difference of more than one-half billion francs was paid to the nobility who had abandoned their property when they fled France during the 1790’s. The upper bourgeoisie owned most of the bonds and lost much of their anticipated interest. Other critics believed the windfall should have been used to defray government debts, not reward people who had often fought in foreign armies against France. On the other hand, the transaction had the positive effect of settling the nagging issue of émigré claims to lands they had abandoned, since they accepted the money as compensation. Nevertheless, no group outside the nobility favored this action. The middle classes also protested in 1827, when the king dissolved the National Guard, the citizen militia that was not under the control of the regular military officials.
Meanwhile, the growing influence of the Church also caused apprehension in some quarters. The Ultramontane faction of Roman Catholics
An impatient man, Charles was not politically adept. Convinced of his royal prerogative, he appointed a new Ultraroyalist prime minister, even though he knew that he did not have majority support in the Chamber. Popularly dubbed the “Ultra of the Ultras,” Prince Auguste-Jules-Armand-Marie de Polignac
Early in 1830, a hostile Chamber of Deputies met and voted an address to Charles denouncing his new ministry. In his response, the king, who recalled that his brother Louis XVI had been criticized for yielding to the National Assembly in 1789, took a hard line and dissolved the Chamber of Deputies without replying to their address. The election that followed returned an even greater majority opposing the king. Once again, Charles answered by dissolving the National Assembly. This time, the king was determined to have his own way. He altered the Charter of 1815
Previously faithful royalists now abandoned the regime, including the great Romantic writer René de Chateaubriand
Although Louis-Philippe was a direct descendant of King Louis XIII (1601-1643), his ideas and actions seemed in keeping with those of the French middle classes. The new king’s father had been an eager participant in the early stages of the French Revolution (1789) until perishing in the Reign of Terror. Louis-Philippe himself had fought in French armies against the Austrians and Prussians before emigrating in 1793. His elevation to a new throne reassured many French citizens who feared that establishment of a republic might result in opposition from foreign governments or in Jacobin
The new regime was controlled by the upper middle class, who dominated the Chamber of Deputies. Although the masses had no voice in the government, the new order was a further step in the direction of representative government and was tolerated for eighteen years. Had King Charles X and his Ultraroyalist supporters been more flexible and willing to make concessions to the middle classes, French political institutions might have evolved in the manner and direction of those of Great Britain; instead, French institutions changed through revolutionary processes and resulted in a thoroughly democratic republican government by the end of the nineteenth century.
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Alexander, Robert. Re-writing the French Revolutionary Tradition: Liberal Opposition and the Fall of the Bourbon Monarchy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Broad study of the revolutionary tradition in French politics between 1815 and 1830 that looks at all classes of French citizens. -
Howarth, T. E. B. Citizen King. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967. This is a clear, readable account of the life and times of Louis-Philippe, who succeeded Charles X as king of France. -
Kroen, Sheryl. Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Exploration of politics in postrevolutionary France, as seen through the prism of theater, with a focus on Molière’s play Tartuffe (1664), which enjoyed renewed popularity during the 1820’s. -
Magraw, Roger. France, 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. The July Revolution is viewed as a further step by the bourgeoisie toward political and social dominance in France. -
Marrinan, Michael. Painting Politics for Louis Philippe: Art and Ideology in Orleanist France, 1830-1848. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988. A fascinating account of the use of art as political propaganda during the July monarchy. -
Pinkney, David. The French Revolution of 1830. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972. This work is one of the most complete and objective accounts in English. -
Rader, Daniel L. The Journalists and the July Revolution in France: The Role of the Political Press in the Overthrow of the Bourbon Restoration, 1827-1830. The Hague, Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1973. Rader explains how journalists helped end a regime that attempted to limit freedom of expression.
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François-René de Chateaubriand; Napoleon I; Adolphe Thiers.