The Restoration of the Monarchy in England and France

Mr Coulombe looks at the restoration of Catholicism in both England and France after their respective Satanic "Civil War" and Revolution.

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, KCSS, STM

But organized wealth and universal cunning are far too strong for him. He is lied to on every side, a man easily deceived j he is deserted in battle by his dependants who owed him most gratitude, by his own children, by all. His energy attempts the hopeless task of recovery. It fails and he passes a dozen years, the ageing remainder of so tragic a life, in yet another impoverished exile, illuminated by a religious doctrine long established in better days and growing in intensity as he approaches death: and death he meets with a holiness and a renunciation that should exalt his memory.
—Hilaire Belloc, James the Second.

Last month, we looked at the murders of Charles I and Louis XVI, and the many parallels between them. Both were devout believers in their respective varieties of Christianity (although Charles considered himself a Catholic and negotiated with Rome for reunion).  Both tried to protect their poorer subjects from their wealthier ones.  Both would lose their Crowns and their lives to Oligarchs who wished to replace traditional governance with themselves.  Their causes were upheld by the remoter parts of their countries, and they were replaced by dictators – Cromwell on the one hand, and Robespierre and Bonaparte on the other (although to be fair, the Corsican was far more humane than the other two).

Despite enormous amounts of internal plotting and occasional violent opposition – often centred in either country’s “Celtic Fringe” – neither revolutionary regime was ended by internal action on the part of the exiled Monarch’s supporters.  Rather, in the case of the British Isles, Restoration was imposed by General Monck and the army; in France, it was the victorious Allies of 1814 and 1815.  Nevertheless, in both countries, once the deed was done, the returning Kings were greeted rapturously by their once-estranged and now chastened subjects.

Both Restorations saw an explosion in literature and the other arts.  The London stage, freed from Puritan suppression, turned out and performed endless numbers of plays, while the surviving Cavalier poets happily turned out masterpieces.  Romanticism, in full swing upon the return of the King to Paris, was dizzying in effect upon all of the arts.  Both Restorations were heavily equipped with dandies and wits of all sorts, enjoying the revival of intellectual freedom the respective restored Monarchies brought in their wake.

Another happy benefit of the Restorations in both countries was the revival of Catholicism.  In the British Isles, it was partial, but still very much in the air.  St. Claude de La Colombiere was the confessor for some time to Charles II’s Catholic Queen, Catherine of Braganza, and the King would enter the Church on his deathbed.  In France, the Church began a rapid programme of revival that would outlast the Restoration and encompass most of the 19th century; but its roots were definitely laid down during this era.

Both Restorations had a particular drawback, which was a rise in public immorality of all sorts.  In part this was because the revolutionary regimes had been so very oppressive.  Liberation did not just mean the freedom to do the right thing – it also meant that fallen nature would have its way.  Nor did it help that neither restored  King – Charles II nor Louis XVIII – had a tremendous reputation for morality – and both would die without any legitimate children.  But they both did have enormous charm.

They would need it, because the Oligarchies that had murdered their predecessors were still very much alive, and anxious to regain total power.  The defenders of both Monarchies at home, who had weathered danger, death, and abuse during the revolutionary years, were anxious for revenge and restitution. It was left to both Charles II and Louis XVIII to play a difficult game.  On the one hand, they had to give sufficient recompense to their loyal followers to ameliorate their losses.  On the other, they could not afford to make the Oligarchs surrender more than a fraction of their ill-gotten gains.  At the same time, they had to maintain the fiction that they were as Sovereign and independent as their forbears had been.  It was a difficult game for both Kings, and yet each played it exceedingly well until their respective deaths.

Each was succeeded by his younger brother: Charles II by the Catholic James II (aka James VII), Louis XVIII by Charles X.  Even as the two older brothers had a great many similarities, so too did the younger.  As Duke of York and Count of Artois respectively, the new Monarchs were both handsome in their youths, and possessed amiable and indeed sparkling personalities.  In those more carefree days, they were pleasure-loving, and great gallants with several mistresses.  This was the case even after revolution destroyed both of their worlds, and sent them off into exile.

But eventually, the duo got religion.  In James’ case, while trying seduce to Anne, the daughter of King Charles II’s chief minister, Edward Hyde, in 1659, he promised to marry her.  No one thought the 26-year-old roué would marry a commoner, but he did so in 1660.  It was a happy marriage and produced two daughters – Mary and Anne.  In 1668 or 1669, he and his wife secretly converted to Catholicism; their daughters did not.  Anne would die in 1671.  Two years later, he married the Italian Princess, Maria of Modena, who was of course both royal and a fellow Catholic.  Charles X of France, on the other hand, was of course always Catholic, even if his conviction was not reflected in his morals.  But his longtime mistress died in 1804, and his wife the following year, whereupon he took an oath of chastity, which he honoured for the rest of his life.  Both Monarchs would be zealous for the revival of the Catholic Church in their countries, which would contribute to their undoing.

Both new Kings were crowned in all the ancient pomp that Westminster Abbey in 1685 and Reims Cathedral in 1825 could afford – James with his Queen beside him, Charles alone.  Both kings touched and healed miraculously for the King’s Evil on that occasion. This method of curing scrofula since early times spoke to the uniqueness of both Monarchies.  Of Charles’ touch, Solange Herz wrote,

The last of the true French kings, he was soon forced to abdicate by the revolution of 1830, but heaven bore witness to his legitimacy by curing through his royal touch the first eleven victims of scrofula who according to ancient tradition presented themselves to him on the occasion. The power to cure this disease, known as ‘the king’s evil,’ was a charism bestowed on the royal line beginning with its founder Clovis. Exercised for centuries, it always proved miraculously effective, provided only that the monarch was in the state of grace.

Then, for both Monarchs, followed a relatively short-lived honeymoon.  Initially, the enthusiasm for both was enormous.  But it soon became apparent that they were both made of sterner – and more honest – stuff than their brothers.  In some ways, this would be the downfall of both Kings.  Neither were really capable of long-term deception.  As it was, both angered their respective Oligarchies.  Both took their oaths to God and their people seriously.  Tension built, but the breaking point was different for the two.  In James’ case, his wife produced an heir; Charles already had an heir – but his proposed revisions to the Constitution were enough to rouse his enemies.  Both of their enemies were driven by fear that their stolen properties would one day be forcibly returned to their rightful owners.

In both cases, their enemies were able to enlist relatives of theirs to betray them.  For James II, it was his daughters, Mary and Anne, and the former’s husband (and James’ nephew), William of Orange, Stadhouder of the Dutch Republic.  Charles X was betrayed by a cousin whose father – Philippe, the Duke of Orleans – had voted for the murder of Louis XVI.  Said cousin, Louis Philippe, even as William and Mary had been, was determined to usurp the place of his Royal kinsman, who had brought him back to court and given him an honoured position.

In both cases, the forces loyal to the sitting Monarch crumbled rather quickly, thanks to the defection of trusted generals – Marlborough for James, Marmont for Charles.  Both Monarchs fled their country – albeit in the opposite direction: James to France, Charles to Great Britain.  Neither ever saw the country of their birth again, but died in exile, after all the horrors they had seen.  Both had courts in exile – St. Germain  in France for James, Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh for Charles initially, followed by various locales in Austria.

The revolution which overthrew James established the supremacy of the Oligarchy’s Parliament over William and Mary and their successors; the rebels of 1830 attempted to do the same for Louis Philippe.  But where, in the former case, the foundation was laid for a system that has endured – albeit increasingly corrupt – down to the present, Louis Philippe was unable to avoid trying to play the King himself.  This resulted in his overthrow in 1848.  From that time on, France has had one empire and four republics, down to the fifth one to-day, under the leadership of the infantile Emmanuel Macron.

It should not be supposed that either King lacked supporters.  In James’ case, the Jacobites (from the Latin for his name) fought for him in Scotland in 1689, and in Ireland in 1689-91; for his son, James III in Scotland and England in 1715 and Scotland alone in 1719; and under his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles III) in Scotland and England in 1745-6.  In 1832, Charles X’s daughter-in-law and mother of his heir, Henri V, attempted a rising in the Vendée but was swiftly defeated.  After that, the Legitimists continued to agitate for Henri’s restoration until his death in 1883.

In both cases, the dynastic issue that opened up was also connected to ideology:  both the Stuarts and the senior line of the French Bourbons were committed to the ideals of traditional Christian Monarchy, whereas the younger lines of Hanover and Orleans supported a new liberalised version.  This same dynamic would be reflected over the course of the 19th century in Spain and Portugal, between the Carlist and Miguelist lines of the respective houses of Bourbon of Spain and Braganza, and the younger.

So it was that even after the main line of the Stuarts died out in the male line with Henry IX, Cardinal York in 1807, and as mentioned with Henri V in 1883, a small core of supporters refused to be reconciled with the main line.  In Great Britain, the Neo-Jacobite Revival of 1889 started several organisations, whose current representative is the Royal Stuart Society.  The French Legitimist Party revived in the 1970s, with the claims of a member of a senior but disinherited (to the Spanish throne) branch of the Bourbons of Spain at the head: his son and successor is the Duke of Anjou.  So too with Spain, where the Carlist line died out 1936, whereupon the Carlists supported the next senior line after the de facto King of Spain’s, the Bourbons of Parma. The liberal and junior line of the House of Braganza having died out, Dom Duarte Nuno, the Miguelist heir, is now first in line to the Throne of Portugal.

The reason for these survivals is simple, really.  It was not just about genealogy, but the ideological foundations of each Restoration.  These were surprising common to one another: Altar, meaning a preponderant place for the Church in establishing the rules and tone for society; Throne, meaning a Monarch with unquestioned authority whose power was sufficient to “protect his people from their politicians;” Subsidiarity, or what they would have called provincial rights or local liberties; Solidarity, or the idea of the nation as a “family” of complementary interests under the Monarch – as opposed to class warfare; and Christendom – the idea that each country so organised was part of a greater whole, be it the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages, or the Holy Alliance of the post-1815 era.

Both Restorations are rarely looked at by historians to-day because of their fleeting nature and seeming failure.  But the ideologies that overthrew them have been dominant for a long time, and ultimately have led us to where we are.  Perhaps the time has come to brush them off and take a closer look.  They may shed some light on where we ought to go from here.

Pictured: A Lost Cause: Flight of King James II after the Battle of the Boyne (1888) by Englishman Andrew Carrick Gow.