THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' FORGOTTEN TRIUMPH

MOST FOREIGNERS HAVE NOT HEARD OF IT AND MOST

FRENCH PEOPLE BARELY RECALL IT 

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.

Why should elections bring a "hostile majority?" What pressures lead the king to dissolve the Chamber, change voting laws and suppress the press? 

Instead of a struggle between emerging capitalists and nobles that the economic evolution weakens, teens learn the term "Four Ordinances" — and to reject history as a whole. 

Recent textbooks split the same facts into themes that though easier to remember are as incomprehensible. The economy is described in another chapter, which is unconnected.

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Now try this:

The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners just described, which has been gathering steam since the 16th century and explains the Revolution itself, takes place over five years of drama (1789-1794). They greatly reduce nobles' power by abolishing their privileges and confiscating the lands of those who have fled.

Capitalists win. But Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (from roughly 1800 to 1815). Then the victorious foreign monarchies impose the Restauration, which tries to bring back nobles' power.

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 in the early 1820's.

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

Zoom

Faced with elections that go against him, the king "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by the measures just mentioned. Street fighting breaks out. Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, he plays cards until his famished troops are pushed back and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack him in his chateau across the river (Saint-Cloud). He abdicates.

*Chateaubriand

Combat Before City Hall on July 28, 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

Bankers offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

Louis-Philippe Leaves Palais-Royal for the Tuileries on July 31 by Horace Vernet / zoom

Without the legitimacy of heredity or election and son of the execrated regicide Equality Philip, the new king depends on them.

The Industrial Revolution takes off.

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Compare the overthrown ruler and the victorious elite: 

• The Death of Charles X: Leaders of the Old Regime welcome him to Heaven.

• Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime: The armchair underscores power and the fingers look like claws.

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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 History, a political tool