Assassination, Politics, and Miracles: France and the Royalist Reaction of 1820

Rating:
Summary: Wow, this is just staggeringly trivial
Review: David Skuy's new book on the French royalist reaction of 1820 is perhaps the most underwhelming work of scholarship I have read in years. It possesses every vice that turns off ordinary readers from historical monographs. But first, a little background is required. In 1820 the Bourbons has been returned to the French throne for an uncomfortable six years. French royalists were divided among more moderate people around Louis XVIII and the reactionary ultras associated with his brother, the future Charles X. At the same time the dynasty has to worry about its fragile hold on French society, it also faced a fertility crisis. Louis had no children. The future Charles did have two sons, but the eldest was trapped in a sterile marriage, while the younger, the Duc de Berry, had so far not produced any sons. So when in February 1820 Berry a pro-Bonapartist journeyman assassinated Berry it appeared that the Bourbons might become extinct. As it turned out, the Duchess was two months pregnant and seven months later the miracle child, Henry was born. The ultras used this period to move politics to the right and in doing so upset the moderate equilibrium that Louis had supported, which led to the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty in 1830. Had they not done so, Skuy suggests, the monarchy might have survived.

So much for Skuy's thesis. Should we care? After all there is not that much about Restoration society that particularly deserves our attention and admiration. Yes it had a parliament, and a constitution. But the lower house was elected by less than 1% of the adult male population, the ministry was not responsible to either house, and parliament could change both the electoral and censorship laws at will, and did so fairly often in the sixteen year period. It hardly strikes me as a set of arrangements that deserve much loyalty, and it seems odd that Skuy criticizes French liberals for showing so little enthusiasm for it and for conspiring to overthrow it. It does not strike me as a polity that was likely to last for much longer even if the "moderate" policy had lasted. Moreover it is not clear that this turning point is all that important. After all Charles X was destined to ascend the throne anyway in 1824, and Skuy does not make clear that he would have been more sensible if the ultras had not won so much in the aftermath of his son's murder. This however is not the only vice. The book is supposedly devoted to showing how popular opinion changed in the aftermath of the assassination. Yet we do not really get any real analysis of what popular opinion thought of the event. Indeed Skuy twice says that the Bourbons held little popularity among the French populace as a whole. Instead what we get is a discussion of the aforementioned 1% of the population that could vote. The books flits about in the cloud-cuckoo land of the Charter's psuedo-Parliament.

We also do not have much of an archival base. Although the list of primary sources looks impressive, much of the book has a padded feel. There are summaries of debates in the French parliament, and there are quotations from the usual ultra suspects, de Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand. Much of the primary sources comes from a couple of newspapers, one in Grenoble, the other in Toulouse, while we get a discussion of the relatively small number of people who made donations to subscriptions to ultra monuments. There is no real discussion of the bases of ultra support, no systematic discussion of its influence in the larger society, while the discussion of ultra ideology is less interesting and informative than in recent work by Darrin McMahon. There is also a tendency to stuff the book with other scholars' discussions of issues, and not add anything important in consequence. We see this in Skuy's unoriginal discussion of conspiracy theory. Then there are the five pages in which Skuy discusses gender in 19th century France, before the page in which he says that the way the Duchess de Berry was portrayed did nothing to undermine it. Much of the book also consists of discussion of the lithographs and illustrations that ultras produced around the Berry assassination and his son's birth. But much of this discussion is obvious and uninteresting. Moreover, Skuy either does not discuss the aesthetic merits of the illustrations, which are underwhelming or he had reprinted them in a very ugly manner. At one point Skuy comments that Berry's death was his finest hour. What a pity that didn't happen more often.

Rating:
Summary: Wow, this is just staggeringly trivial
Review: David Skuy's new book on the French royalist reaction of 1820 is perhaps the most underwhelming work of scholarship I have read in years. It possesses every vice that turns off ordinary readers from historical monographs. But first, a little background is required. In 1820 the Bourbons has been returned to the French throne for an uncomfortable six years. French royalists were divided among more moderate people around Louis XVIII and the reactionary ultras associated with his brother, the future Charles X. At the same time the dynasty has to worry about its fragile hold on French society, it also faced a fertility crisis. Louis had no children. The future Charles did have two sons, but the eldest was trapped in a sterile marriage, while the younger, the Duc de Berry, had so far not produced any sons. So when in February 1820 Berry a pro-Bonapartist journeyman assassinated Berry it appeared that the Bourbons might become extinct. As it turned out, the Duchess was two months pregnant and seven months later the miracle child, Henry was born. The ultras used this period to move politics to the right and in doing so upset the moderate equilibrium that Louis had supported, which led to the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty in 1830. Had they not done so, Skuy suggests, the monarchy might have survived.

So much for Skuy's thesis. Should we care? After all there is not that much about Restoration society that particularly deserves our attention and admiration. Yes it had a parliament, and a constitution. But the lower house was elected by less than 1% of the adult male population, the ministry was not responsible to either house, and parliament could change both the electoral and censorship laws at will, and did so fairly often in the sixteen year period. It hardly strikes me as a set of arrangements that deserve much loyalty, and it seems odd that Skuy criticizes French liberals for showing so little enthusiasm for it and for conspiring to overthrow it. It does not strike me as a polity that was likely to last for much longer even if the "moderate" policy had lasted. Moreover it is not clear that this turning point is all that important. After all Charles X was destined to ascend the throne anyway in 1824, and Skuy does not make clear that he would have been more sensible if the ultras had not won so much in the aftermath of his son's murder. This however is not the only vice. The book is supposedly devoted to showing how popular opinion changed in the aftermath of the assassination. Yet we do not really get any real analysis of what popular opinion thought of the event. Indeed Skuy twice says that the Bourbons held little popularity among the French populace as a whole. Instead what we get is a discussion of the aforementioned 1% of the population that could vote. The books flits about in the cloud-cuckoo land of the Charter's psuedo-Parliament.

We also do not have much of an archival base. Although the list of primary sources looks impressive, much of the book has a padded feel. There are summaries of debates in the French parliament, and there are quotations from the usual ultra suspects, de Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand. Much of the primary sources comes from a couple of newspapers, one in Grenoble, the other in Toulouse, while we get a discussion of the relatively small number of people who made donations to subscriptions to ultra monuments. There is no real discussion of the bases of ultra support, no systematic discussion of its influence in the larger society, while the discussion of ultra ideology is less interesting and informative than in recent work by Darrin McMahon. There is also a tendency to stuff the book with other scholars' discussions of issues, and not add anything important in consequence. We see this in Skuy's unoriginal discussion of conspiracy theory. Then there are the five pages in which Skuy discusses gender in 19th century France, before the page in which he says that the way the Duchess de Berry was portrayed did nothing to undermine it. Much of the book also consists of discussion of the lithographs and illustrations that ultras produced around the Berry assassination and his son's birth. But much of this discussion is obvious and uninteresting. Moreover, Skuy either does not discuss the aesthetic merits of the illustrations, which are underwhelming or he had reprinted them in a very ugly manner. At one point Skuy comments that Berry's death was his finest hour. What a pity that didn't happen more often.