THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' NEGLECTED TRIUMPH

ITS THREE DAYS OF STREET FIGHTING ACCOMPLISHED THE GOAL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BY ELIMINATING THE POLITICAL HOLD OF THE NOBILITY FOREVER

That's not said. This schoolbook of 1966 presents a list of political facts that have no link with underlying issues.* 

*A translation appears at the end of the page.

Instead of a struggle between emerging capitalists and nobles weakened by economic growth, students learn of a political struggle that has no tangible base.  

Recent textbooks split the same facts into themes that are exclusively political. The economy appears in an unconnected chapter.  

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An economic approach:

The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners, which has been gathering steam since the 16th century, comes to a head over five years of drama: the French Revolution (1789-1794). Nobles lose their legal privileges and if they leave, their lands. A business-friendly society replaces that based on hereditary rank. 

But Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (from roughly 1800 to 1815). Then the victorious foreign monarchies impose a government run by surviving nobles (the Restoration, 1815-1830). 

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Those developments slow growth but do not stop it:

• The Saint Martin canal, started in 1805 and stopped in 1809, is rebooted with peace in 1815 and finished in 1824: The industrialization of northern Paris, and the fortunes to be made from it, begin.  

Postcard, end of the 19th century / zoom

• The cemetery of the Holy Innocents undergoes a similar evolution. The plan to make it a full-time marketplace, launched just before the Revolution, is completed toward 1824.

• Developers build the maze of covered passages at the same time. "Vero-Dodat," is named after the two butchers who financed it:

Zoom

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Capitalists' pressure on the government grows. When the king loses elections he "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by suppressing their voting power and press. That is the point of the political measures the textbook mentions.

*René de Chateaubriand, a deeply royalist writer and one of the few perceptive members of the king's entourage.

Street fighting breaks out. Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, the king plays cards in his château across the river until his famished troops are pushed back and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack him. He abdicates.

Combat devant l'Hôtel de Ville le 28 juillet 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

Bankers make up the only organized force. They offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

Louis-Philippe quitte Palais-Royal pour les Tuileries le 31 juillet 1830 ("Louis-Philippe leaves Palais-Royal for the Tuileries July 31, 1830") by Horace Vernet / zoom

The new king is the son of despised Equality Philip, who voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI. Without the legitimacy of heredity or election, he depends on the financiers who have handed him the throne.

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The king is associated with the Church and the past, that is, with economic immobility:

La Mort de Charles X, print, 1836 / zoom

While a newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime expresses authority by his gaze, an armchair that underscores power and fingers that look like claws. That authority lies behind surging economic dynamism.

Portrait de Monsieur Bertin by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1832 / zoom

Calling the insurgency "The Three Glorious Days"

shows capitalists' jubilation at taking power at last.  

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The schoolbook text:

"Did Polignac have to retire?The Charter did not oblige the king to choose his ministers among the Chamber's majority. Rather than cede, Charles X preferred dissolution, but the electors returned a hostile majority. Then the king, by the Four Ordinances pronounced the dissolution of the new Chamber, modified the electoral regime and the regime of the press by his own authority. It was a veritable coup d'état: the Charter did not allow the king to make up the law (July 25, 1830).

Pushed by secret societies where young republicans were numerous, by journalists, by patrons exciting their workers, the people of Paris revolted against the ordinances. The rebels flew the tricolor. After three days of street fighting (the "Three Glorious Days," July 27,28, 29 1830) in which the royal guard was engaged — the rest of the army abstained from fighting — the capital was lost for Charles X."

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 Boring history, a political tool