5.1.2. THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' NEGLECTED TRIUMPH

THREE DAYS OF STREET FIGHTING PERMANENTLY SMASH THE NOBLES' HOLD, LETTING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TAKE OFF*

*Although selling confiscated land in small lots so that the wealthier peasants can buy them means that it takes place more slowly than elsewhere.

That's not said. This schoolbook of 1966 presents a list of political facts with no ties to tangible interests.* 

*A translation appears at the end of the page.

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

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Compare with this. Background:

• The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners, brewing since the 16th century, comes to a head with the French Revolution (1789-1794). Nobles lose their legal privileges and many of their lands, and a business-friendly society replaces that based on hereditary rank. 

• Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (1800-1815) and when he is defeated foreign monarchies impose a government that nobles, though they are weakened, take over again (1815-1830). 

Those events 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 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 marketplace only, 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 finance it:

     Zoom

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Capitalists' pressure on the government grows.

•  When king Charles X loses elections he "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by suppressing voting power and press. That is the essence of the Ordonnances the textbook mentions.

*René de Chateaubriand, royalist writer. This account is based on his memoir, Souvenirs d'outre-tombe, 1848.

• Street fighting breaks out. 

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

Like the picture with which this section begins, the assailants are shown as middle-class, though in fact they were almost entirely plebeian: more later.

• Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, the king plays cards in his château across the river. He does not even supply his troops. The famished soldiers do not defend the bridge and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack. He abdicates.

• 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  by Horace Vernet / zoom

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The upheaval brings the transformation that the infinitely more famous French Revolution began : 

• The deposed king and returned nobles are inseparable from the Church and the past, that is, to economic immobility:

               La Mort [death] de Charles X, print, 1836 / zoom

Charles X joins kings and heroes linked to them in Heaven.

• The gaze of this newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime exudes the authority that association with economic dynamism brings.

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

The seat emphasizes domination and the fingers look like claws.

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

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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Next,

 5.1.3.

Is some history purposely boring?