Monarchs From France

"My government was liable to commit errors: perhaps it did commit them. There are times when the purest intentions are insufficient to direct, or sometimes they even mislead. Experience alone could teach; it shall not be lost. All that can save France is my wish."

"My subjects have learned, by cruel trials, that the principle of the legitimacy of sovereigns is one of the fundamental bases of social order,—the only one upon which, amidst a great nation, a wise and well-ordered liberty can be established. This doctrine has just been proclaimed as that of all Europe. I had previously consecrated it be my charter, and I claim to add to that charter all the guarantees which can secure the benefits of it."

"Louis was by no means ill qualified to perform the part of his great ancestor Henry IV]. His understanding was excellent, his reading extensive, his temper mild and equal. He had no fanaticism political or religious. During the reign of his brother he had been one of those who wished to see the royal power restrained by constitutional checks... The excesses of the French revolution had alienated from the cause of liberty many who had once been warmly attached to it. But no such effect had been produced on the clear judgment and serene disposition of Louis... [H]istory owes him this honourable testimony, that he struggled long against the influence of bad advisers; that he yielded to it only when sickness, age, and domestic calamities had broken the force of his mind; that the best measures of his reign were those which he was himself concerned in preparing, and that his best ministers were those of his own free choice."

"Unhappily, the republicans consulted their passions rather than their reason. The king would not have been a despot if he could, and could not have been a despot if he would. Napoleon, raised to the throne of France, would have both the inclination and the means. But Louis was the representative of the emigration, and Napoleon of the revolution. The men of the revolution, with a levity inexcusable in persons conversant with public affairs, preferred a vigorous, crafty, and remorseless tyrant, with a tri-coloured cockade, to a prince whose disposition was liberal, and whose government, though by no means faultless, was the best that they had ever known, but who wore a blue riband, and claimed the throne by a hereditary title."

"Impious and factious men, after having seduced you by false declamations, and by deceitful promises, hurried you into irreligion and revolt. Since that time, a torrent of calamities has rushed in upon you from every side. You proved faithless to the God of your forefathers; and that God, justly offended, has made you feel the weight of his anger; you rebelled against the authority which he had established, and a sanguinary Despotism, and an Anarchy not less fatal, have alternately continued to harrass you with incessant rage."

"You must renounce the dominion of those treacherous and cruel usurpers who promised you happiness, but who have given you only famine and death; we wish to relieve you from their tyranny, which has so much injured you, to inspire you with the resolution of shaking it off. You must return to that holy religion which had showered down upon France the blessings of Heaven. We wish to restore its altars:—by prescribing justice to Sovereigns, and fidelity to subjects, it maintains good order, ensures the triumph of the laws, and produces the felicity of empires. You must restore that Government which, for 14 centuries, constituted the glory of France and the delight of her inhabitants; which rendered our Country the most flourishing of States, and yourselves the happiest of People:—It is our wish to restore it. Have not the various Revolutions which have occurred, augmented your distress, since the period of its destruction, and convinced you that it is the only Government that is fit for you?"

"This insurrection had something in common with the ideas of the doctrinaires, of the liberals who had drawn up the Address, and of the middle classes who had elected them. It was an explosion of sentiments which Charles X had wished to appease through the glory of conquest; but Algeria was a ridiculous diversion for a people so addicted to tradition. The republican and Bonapartist ideas were confounded with the hatred for the treaties of 1815. "The combatants of the days of July," said Emile Bourgeois, "were not engaged in a riot like that of 1789. They had taken up arms against Europe at least as much as against Charles X and dreamed, above all, of a victorious Republic and of the Empire.""

"[You are] the son of Saint-Louis."

"It is not enough to groan beneath the yoke of your oppressors; you must be assisted in shaking it off. Show the world how the French, restored to their senses, can obliterate faults, in the commission of which their hearts were not concerned: Prove, that as Henry the Great has transmitted to us with his blood, his love of his people, so are you also the descendants of that people, one part of whom, always faithful to his cause, fought to restore him to his Throne; and the other part, abjuring a momentary error, bathed his feet with the tears of repentance:—Remember that you are the Grandsons of the Conquerors of Ivry and Fontain Francaise."

"Religious Worship must be re-established, the Hydra of Anarchy destroyed, the Regal Authority be restored to all its rights, before we can execute our intentions of opposing abuses of all kinds with invincible firmness; of seeking them with diligence, and of proscribing them with decision."

"His intestines were inflamed and ulcerated, making digestion virtually impossible; tuberculosis had spread to his lungs, accompanied by habitual cough. Either of these major ailments, or the accumulation of minor problems, may have killed him, not to mention physiological weaknesses that made him prone to disease or his doctors' remedies of enemas and bleedings, which continued right to his death."

"My brother, who hath well concluded, that the union of Hearts, in these times of danger, is as necessary as the forces of the Kingdome, to oppose with the more puissance, the Enemies of the greatnesse of this Crowne, and its tranquilitie."

"Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm."

"I will never allow a Prince, who should only be there to hold the stirrup for Bonaparte's family, to become King of a neighboring realm."

"King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner."

"La charte sera désormais une vérité."

"Le juste milieu."

"Entente cordiale"

"The cordial agreement"

"Those who, as representatives of the people, received, in trust for the people, the oath of the 20th of December, 1848, those, especially who, being twice invested with the confidence of the nation, had as representatives heard that oath sworn, and as legislators had seen it violated, had assumed, with their writ of summons, two duties. The first of these was, on the day when that oath should be violated, to rise in their places, to present their breasts to the enemy, without calculating either his numbers or his strength, to shelter with their bodies the sovereignty of the people and as a means to combat and cast down the usurper, to grasp every sort of weapon, from the law found in the code, to the paving stone that one picks up in the street. The second duty was, after having accepted the combat and all its chances to accept proscription and all its miseries, to stand eternally erect before the traitor, his oath in their hands, to forget their personal sufferings, their private sorrows, their families dispersed and maltreated, their fortunes destroyed, their affections crushed, their bleeding hearts; to forget themselves, and to feel thenceforth but a single wound — the wound of France to cry aloud for justice; never to suffer themselves to be appeased, never to relent, but to be implacable; to seize the despicable perjurer, crowned though he were, if not with the hand of the law, at least with the pincers of truth, and to heat red-hot in the fire of history all the letters of his oath, and brand them on his face. He who writes these lines is one of those who did not shrink, on the 2nd of December, from the utmost effort to accomplish the first of these two great duties; in publishing this book he performs the second."

"Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones."

"All eyes were turned towards this man. A pallid face, its bony emaciated angles thrown into bold relief by the shaded lamps, a nose large and long, moustaches, a curled lock of hair above a narrow forehead, eyes small and dull, and with a timid and uneasy manner, bearing no resemblance to the Emperor, — this man was Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. During the murmurs which greeted his entrance, he remained for some instants, his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, erect and motionless on the tribune, the pediment of which bore these dates: February 22, 23, 24; and above which were inscribed these three words: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

"For decades aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks."

"Etiez-vous à Sedan?"

"You ask me whether they are attached to the present government: they are sincerely grateful to it for having restored order—I saw to-day at Arles on the Roman obelisk an inscription to Louis Napoleon with the simple words—"il nous a sauvés de l'Anarchie"—which you may depend upon it expresses the sincere feeling of the industrious classes. But above all, the French peasant (who feeds the army and is the real power of France) sticks to this man and is disposed to maintain him because he is the symbol, after all, of that final breach with the past and with a feudal aristocracy by means of which the peasant has become a person[n]age and which he is firmly resolved shall never be filled up."

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

"Usually, it is man who attacks; as for me, I defend myself, and I often capitulate."

"After having read the French Speech from the Throne, in which it was seen that the Emperor Napoleon was lowering the flag for the great republic of the United States of North America, on the Mexican question."

"The President, functionary and servant, swore fidelity to the sovereign people. Bending before the national majesty, manifest in the omnipotent Assembly, he received from the Assembly the Constitution, and swore obedience to it. The representatives were inviolable, and he was not. We repeat it: a citizen responsible to all the citizens, he was, of the whole nation, the only man so bound. Hence, in this oath, sole and supreme, there was a solemnity which went to the heart. He who writes these lines was present in his place in the Assembly, on the day this oath was taken; he is one of those who, in the face of the civilized world called to bear witness, received this oath in the name of the people, and who have it still in their hands. Thus it runs: — "In presence of God, and before the French people, represented by the National Assembly, I swear to remain faithful to the democratic republic, one and indivisible, and to fulfil all the duties imposed upon me by the Constitution." The President of the Assembly, standing, read this majestic formula; then, before the whole Assembly, breathlessly silent and attentive, intensely expectant, Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, raising his right hand, said, in a firm, loud voice: "I swear it!""

"In politics evils should be remedied not revenged."

"In less than three years after this memorable day, on the 2nd of December, 1851, at daybreak, there might be read on all the street corners in Paris, this placard:— "In the name of the French people, the President of the Republic: "Decrees — "Article 1. The National Assembly is dissolved. "Article 2. Universal suffrage is re-established. The law of the 31st of May is repealed. "Article 3. The French people are convoked in their comitia. "Article 4. A state of siege is decreed throughout the first military division. "Article 5. The Council of State is dissolved. "Article 6. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of this decree. "Done at the Palace of the Élysée, December 2, 1851."

"I recognize the principle of the fight against the revolution as my own, but I do not believe it right to depict Louis Napoleon as the sole or just κατ’ ἐξοχήν representative of the revolution ... how many existences are there in the current political world that are not rooted in revolutionary soil? Take Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all American republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the England that is still footed in the consciousness of the 'glorious revolution' of 1866 ... Bonapartism is not the father of the revolution."

"I never admired the character of the first Napoleon; but I recognize his great genius. His work, too, has left its impress for good on the face of Europe. The third Napoleon could have no claim to having done a good or just act."

"In internal affairs also, the reign of Saint Louis was one of justice and not of weakness. He was a just judge, but he knew very well how to send even barons to the gallows. Order is heaven's first law, and Louis sought law and order."

"Up to his time the Capetian house had been prosaic and matter-of-fact. He will glorify that house and give it spiritual grandeur. Though none of his successors will equal him, the spiritual elevation of his life and work will leave an aureole about the family of the Capetians. Most of the other royal or imperial houses of Europe had eagles, lions, leopards, or some sort of carnivorous animal as their emblem, while the house of France had chosen three modest flowers. Saint Louis was the justification of the lilies."

"If the figure of Saint Louis was so soon to be idealized in story and legend, it is not only because the king was good, just and charitable; it is because, as his chronicler Joinville says, under his rule through righteous administration France had become more prosperous and the way of life easier and more humane. He will bequeath to the Capetian monarchy and to France enduring renown."

"A justices tenir et à droitures soies loiaus et roides à tes sougiez, sans tourner à destre ne à senestre, mais adès à droit, et soustien la querelle dou povre jeusques à tant que la verités soit desclairie."

"On se doit assemer en robes et en armes en tel manière que li preudome de cest siècle ne dient que on en face trop, ne les joenes gens de cest siècle ne dient que on en face peu."

"Saint Louis represents a return to the idea of the priest-king. He is in harmony with his time, which is that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and characterized by a revival of the Christian faith."

"The voice of history renders a more honourable testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, an hero, and a man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people, the friend of his neighbours, and the terror of the infidels. Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence, corrupted his understanding and his heart; his devotion stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and Dominic; he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant."

"Je ameroie mieus que uns Escoz venist d'Escosse et gouvernast le peuple du royaume bien et loyaument, que que tu le gouvernasses mal apertement."

"Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky."

"Charles was the keenest of all kings to seek out and support wise men so that they might philosophize with all delight. Almost all of the kingdom entrusted to him by God was so foggy and almost blind, but he made it luminous with the new ray of knowledge, almost unknown to this barbarous land, with God lighting the way so it could see. But now studies are growing weak, and the light of wisdom because it is less loved grows rarer among most people."

"Make us eternal truths receive, And practice all that we believe; Give us Thyself that we may see The Father and the Son by Thee."

"[T]he encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne. The dignity of his person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new æra from his restoration of the Western empire."

"I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the œconomy of his farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and, after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism."

"This great empire Charlemagne formed into a systematically organized State, and gave the Frank dominion settled institutions adapted to impart to it strength and consistency. This must however not be understood, as if he first introduced the Constitution of his empire in its whole extent, but as implying that institutions partly already in existence, were developed under his guidance, and attained a more decided and unobstructed efficiency. The King stood at the head of the officers of the empire, and the principle of hereditary monarchy was already recognized."

"Under this tomb lies the body of Charles, the great and orthodox emperor, who gloriously increased the Kingdom of the Franks and reigned with great success for forty-seven years. He died in his seventies in the year of our Lord 814, in the seventh Indiction, on the twenty-eighth day of January."

"Nothing of that which was gained by fraud can go to the liberation of his soul. Let his wealth be divided among the workmen of this our building, and the poorer servants of our palace."

"This blond, barbarian giant, who slept with a slate under his pillow, and made the English scholar, Alcuin of York, his chief counsellor and head of his palace school, conceived the tremendous ambition of reuniting the West in a new Roman empire in place of the remote and now almost entirely oriental empire of Byzantium."