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A consummate politician and diplomat, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) was an extraordinary survivor. Appointed bishop of Autun by Louis XVI – he resigned from his diocese in 1791 and was excommunicated after taking the oath of loyalty to the civil constitution of the clergy – he held political office during the Revolution, under Napoleon, during the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe, whom he served as ambassador to London until he retired in 1834. He was Grand Chamberlain under Napoleon from 1804 to 1809, and under the Restoration, serving both Louis XVIII and Charles X between 1815 and 1830. Talleyrand was responsible for the selection by the provisional government of Joseph-Dominique Louis (1775–1837) as minister of finance in April 1814, an appointment later confirmed by Louis XVIII. Abbé Louis served five times in this capacity.<ref name="donougher" /> | A consummate politician and diplomat, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) was an extraordinary survivor. Appointed bishop of Autun by Louis XVI – he resigned from his diocese in 1791 and was excommunicated after taking the oath of loyalty to the civil constitution of the clergy – he held political office during the Revolution, under Napoleon, during the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe, whom he served as ambassador to London until he retired in 1834. He was Grand Chamberlain under Napoleon from 1804 to 1809, and under the Restoration, serving both Louis XVIII and Charles X between 1815 and 1830. Talleyrand was responsible for the selection by the provisional government of Joseph-Dominique Louis (1775–1837) as minister of finance in April 1814, an appointment later confirmed by Louis XVIII. Abbé Louis served five times in this capacity.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| − | ===Feast of the Federation=== | + | ===Feast of the Federation===Celebrations on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, called the Feast of Federation, took the form of a military parade and an open-air mass held on the Champ de Mars, for which a huge temporary amphitheatre was constructed by volunteers.<ref name="donougher" /> |
| − | Celebrations on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, called the Feast of Federation, took the form of a military parade and an open-air mass held on the Champ de Mars, for which a huge temporary amphitheatre was constructed by volunteers.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
===Champ de Mai=== | ===Champ de Mai=== | ||
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Louis XVIII was known to be fond of quoting Horace. Alexandre Dumas made much of this in a scene in ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1844), ch. 10. Hugo himself translated poems of Horace.<ref name="donougher" /> | Louis XVIII was known to be fond of quoting Horace. Alexandre Dumas made much of this in a scene in ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1844), ch. 10. Hugo himself translated poems of Horace.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| − | ===Mathurin Bruneau=== | + | ===Mathurin Bruneau===An impostor who claimed to be the son of Louis XVI, Bruneau (1784–1822), a cobbler by trade, was tried in 1818 and imprisoned at Mont St-Michel, where he died.<ref name="donougher" /> |
| − | An impostor who claimed to be the son of Louis XVI, Bruneau (1784–1822), a cobbler by trade, was tried in 1818 and imprisoned at Mont St-Michel, where he died.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
===The French Academy... through Study=== | ===The French Academy... through Study=== | ||
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An active Revolutionary (he was a member of the Convention and voted for the execution of Louis XVI), Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), whose Death of Marat is perhaps his best-known painting, went into exile in Brussels, and is buried there. Poet, dramatist and politician, Antoine Arnault (1766–1834), minister of public education during the Hundred Days, was exiled in 1816 and his membership of the French Academy withdrawn. He was allowed to return to France in 1819 and was re-elected to the Academy in 1829. A distinguished mathematician and engineer, Lazare Carnot (1753–1823) was also a leading politician. As a member of the Convention he voted for the execution of Louis XVI, then in 1794 contributed to the downfall of Robespierre. He was the great organizer of the French Revolutionary Army, and one of the first five directors of the Directory. Appointed minister of war in 1800 by First Consul Napoleon, he resigned from public office in 1804 after Napoleon was crowned emperor but returned as minister of the interior during the Hundred Days. He was exiled in 1815 and died in Magdeburg.<ref name="donougher" /> | An active Revolutionary (he was a member of the Convention and voted for the execution of Louis XVI), Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), whose Death of Marat is perhaps his best-known painting, went into exile in Brussels, and is buried there. Poet, dramatist and politician, Antoine Arnault (1766–1834), minister of public education during the Hundred Days, was exiled in 1816 and his membership of the French Academy withdrawn. He was allowed to return to France in 1819 and was re-elected to the Academy in 1829. A distinguished mathematician and engineer, Lazare Carnot (1753–1823) was also a leading politician. As a member of the Convention he voted for the execution of Louis XVI, then in 1794 contributed to the downfall of Robespierre. He was the great organizer of the French Revolutionary Army, and one of the first five directors of the Directory. Appointed minister of war in 1800 by First Consul Napoleon, he resigned from public office in 1804 after Napoleon was crowned emperor but returned as minister of the interior during the Hundred Days. He was exiled in 1815 and died in Magdeburg.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| − | ===Soult== | + | ===Soult==Marshal Soult (1769–1851) joined the army in 1785 as a private soldier, and was appointed marshal in 1804. Having rallied to Napoleon during the Hundred Days (he was Napoleon’s chief of staff at Waterloo), he went into exile until 1819. Displaying considerable political opportunism, he was made a peer by Charles X and went on to serve under Louis-Philippe as minister of war, minister of foreign affairs, and several times as prime minister. He represented the French government at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838.<ref name="donougher" /> |
| − | Marshal Soult (1769–1851) joined the army in 1785 as a private soldier, and was appointed marshal in 1804. Having rallied to Napoleon during the Hundred Days (he was Napoleon’s chief of staff at Waterloo), he went into exile until 1819. Displaying considerable political opportunism, he was made a peer by Charles X and went on to serve under Louis-Philippe as minister of war, minister of foreign affairs, and several times as prime minister. He represented the French government at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
===Descartes=== | ===Descartes=== | ||
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===the statue of Henri IV=== | ===the statue of Henri IV=== | ||
An equestrian statue of Henri IV was erected at the end of the Pont-Neuf in 1614. It was melted down by Revolutionaries in 1792, and replaced in 1818 with a replica commissioned by Louis XVIII.<ref name="donougher" /> | An equestrian statue of Henri IV was erected at the end of the Pont-Neuf in 1614. It was melted down by Revolutionaries in 1792, and replaced in 1818 with a replica commissioned by Louis XVIII.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===write to Bacot=== | ||
| + | Claude-René Bacot (1782–1853), made a baron in 1816, was an undistinguished politician.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Monsieur... the Riverside Conspiracy=== | ||
| + | All those arrested in 1818 for their involvement – supposedly with the encouragement of the king’s brother Monsieur, the future Charles X – in the so-called Riverside Conspiracy, including Vicomte Jean-Baptiste Chappedelaine (1741–1830) and Simon de Canuel (1767–1840), were acquitted of any royalist plot. There is no evidence that Jean-François O’Mahony (1772–1842), a French general of Irish origin who rallied to the Bourbons, was in any way connected with this incident.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===The Black Pin=== | ||
| + | A black pin was supposed to identify members of another conspiracy, all former soldiers or army employees, who were brought to trial in 1817 but ultimately acquitted of any wrong-doing.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Delaverderie... Trogoff=== | ||
| + | What is known as the 19 August 1820 (or French Bazaar) conspiracy was an alleged military plot to overthrow the government. Gauthier de Laverderie (1793–1866), then a lieutenant, and Adolphe-Édouard de Trogoff (1788–1830), a captain, were involved. A small number of defendants were found guilty and sentenced to short terms in prison.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Decazes... something of a liberal=== | ||
| + | Appointed Paris prefect of police in 1815, Élie Decazes (1780–1860) was a moderate royalist who went on to become Louis XVIII’s minister of the interior and prime minister. After the murder of the Duc de Berry he was ousted by the ultra-royalists, who accused his liberalism of being responsible for the assassination.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Pilorge... according to the Charter=== | ||
| + | In De la monarchie selon la charte, a pamphlet in defence of the legitimacy of the 1814 Charter and of a constitutional monarchy, Chateaubriand attacked the dissolution of the notoriously reactionary but constitutionally legitimate Chamber of Deputies. This led to Chateaubriand’s fall from favour with the king, and he became a member of the ultra-royalist opposition. Hyacinthe Pilorge (1795–1861) was Chateaubriand’s secretary from 1816 to 1843.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Lafon above Talma=== | ||
| + | François-Joseph Talma (1763–1826), who started out as a dentist, embarked on his glorious career as an actor during the Revolution. The younger actor Pierre Lafon (1773–1846) had to make his way in Talma’s shadow, but an announcement of his appearance at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, in 1814, for instance, hailed him as the ‘foremost tragic actor on the French stage’ (H. Carrington Lancaster in ‘Letters of Lafon to Napoleon, Talma and Others’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 68, no. 6, June 1953, pp. 377–82, Johns Hopkins University Press).<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Monsieur de Féletz... Hoffmann... Z=== | ||
| + | A churchman who refused to take the oath of loyalty to the civil constitution, Charles-Marie de Féletz (1767–1850) was a journalist, Academician (who voted against Victor Hugo’s candidature) and literary critic, who signed his articles A. A review of Hugo’s Nouvelles Odes in 1824 in the Journal des Débats, written by François-Benoît Hoffmann (1760–1828), who signed himself Z, prompted a response from Hugo, challenging the critic’s literary criteria and the usefulness of the terms ‘classical’ and ‘Romantic’.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Charles Nodier=== | ||
| + | The Romantic poet and novelist Charles Nodier (1780–1844), a regular contributor to the Journal des Débats, in 1819 published his novel Thérèse Aubert, a story set during the insurrectionary wars in the Vendée region against the Revolutionary government (1793–6). Nodier was a friend of Hugo and a prominent supporter of his candidature for a seat in the French Academy.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Divorce was abolished=== | ||
| + | Divorce legislation was introduced in France in 1792. Over subsequent years the law was reformed and divorce became harder to obtain. It was abolished in 1816.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===The lycées... colleges=== | ||
| + | The term lycée, introduced with the educational reforms under Napoleon in 1802 and replaced <ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===during the Restoration with the pre-Revolutionary name collège, was reinstated after the 1848 Revolution.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===the king of Rome=== | ||
| + | The courtesy title of Napoleon’s son (1811–32) by the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, whom Napoleon, when he abdicated in 1815, named as his heir. (For this reason the next Bonaparte to occupy the French throne, in 1852, styled himself Napoleon III.)<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Her Royal Highness Madame... Duc d’Orléans... Duc de Berry... dragoons=== | ||
| + | Son altesse royale was the honorific title of the wife of the king’s brother (later Charles X), Marie Thérèse of Savoy. The future king Louis-Philippe, from a cadet branch of the Bourbons, inherited the title of Duc d’Orléans and the command of the hussars from his father, who was guillotined in 1793. Charles X’s younger son, the Duc de Berry, was colonel-general of the lancers, not the dragoons, whose colonel-general was his older brother the Duc d’Angoulême.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Les Invalides=== | ||
| + | Louis XIV was the founder of Les Invalides, built as a hospital and home for veteran soldiers. The church of the Dome, a private royal chapel within the complex, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646–1708), was completed in 1706. Under Napoleon the Dome became the pantheon of France’s military heroes. Napoleon’s ashes were transferred there in 1840.<ref name="donougher" /> | ||
===Monsieur de Trinquelague=== | ===Monsieur de Trinquelague=== | ||
