The July Revolution (1820 to 1830)

0:12 France in the early 1820s had done the impossible.

0:15 They had re-integrated themselves back

0:17 into the international system as a Great Power.

0:21 But in 1823, that all changed.

0:24 For some reason, France recklessly invaded Spain,

0:27 which brought the Great Powers to the brink

0:30 of war and almost took down the international system.

0:34 Why did France get like 20% stupider in the 1820s?

0:37 It’s an important question, and to answer it,

0:40 we will have to go back to where we left off with French politics,

0:49 1820, 3 years before France invaded Spain.

0:57 The 1820s were when things began to change in France,

1:00 and it all started when the nephew of the King

1:03 of France was stabbed to death by a left wing radical.

1:06 This event sent shockwaves through French politics.

1:10 The aristocracy and their allies in the French legislature,

1:14 the Ultra-Conservatives, demanded immediate action.

1:18 During the crisis, superstar politician

1:20 Richelieu was brought back into government, and as Prime Minister,

1:24 he pushed through a series of changes to the French electoral system.

1:28 Up until now, the process had been

1:30 that 1/5th of the legislators were elected every year,

1:33 and the trend over the last 5 years had been that every year,

1:37 the Ultra-Conservatives were losing ground

1:39 to the Centrists and the left-wing Republicans.

1:42 With the assassination of the Kings nephew,

1:45 the Ultra-Conservatives were officially freaked out

1:47 by the rise of the French Left, and Richelieu was committed to stopping

1:51 them from making any more electoral gains.

1:54 Under the new system, 40% of the seats in the legislature would

1:58 be elected by a select group of ultra-wealthy elites,

2:02 who were a lot more conservative and pro-monarchy than the general public.

2:07 That was precisely the point.

2:09 The people close to the King were getting worried about the mood of the public,

2:13 so they just insulated themselves from public opinion.

2:16 They came from the “maybe if I ignore

2:18 my problems they’ll just go away” school of thought.

2:21 They made elections a lot less frequent for the same reason.

2:26 The thing about elections is that the more representative they are,

2:30 the more stabilizing they are to the state.

2:33 It forces governments to address problems early,

2:36 before they became existential threats.

2:38 It gives opposition groups something productive to do.

2:41 Would you rather have angry opposition groups handing out leaflets,

2:45 or stockpiling weapons?

2:46 Which do you think is better for the long term health of the state?

2:52 But that only works if elections are fair.

2:56 Without fair elections, opposition groups are forced to get creative,

3:01 and the probability of a rebellion

3:04 or a civil war or even a Revolution increases.

3:09 Hmm.

3:09 So France’s electoral reforms in 1820 made the French state more brittle,

3:15 and they did this to insulate the King

3:18 and his preferred Ultra-Conservatives from their own growing unpopularity.

3:22 In my opinion it was a stupid thing to do.

3:26 But the Ultra-Conservatives didn’t see it as stupid.

3:29 In the next election under this new rigged electoral system,

3:33 the Ultra-Conservatives won 85% of the seats in the French legislature,

3:38 absolutely dominating every other group that voiced

3:41 any opposition to the King’s will.

3:43 The Ultra-Conservatives thought that they had pulled off a soft coup.

3:49 They thought that they had won.

3:52 But it was all an illusion.

3:54 Even with 85% of the seats in the legislature,

3:57 the Ultra-Conservatives were still unpopular with the people.

4:01 The electoral reforms didn’t fix that fundamental problem, it only concealed it.

4:08 In fact, they had sown the seeds of their own destruction.

4:18 With the huge Ultra-Conservative majority in the legislature,

4:21 the centrist Prime Minister Richelieu was

4:24 replaced by an extreme conservative named Villèle.

4:27 And then a few years later,

4:29 when the Spanish Liberals rose up and remove their autocratic King from power,

4:34 Villèle persuaded the King of France to invade.

4:37 It’s clear why Villèle felt threatened by this, right?

4:41 He was trying to re-establish autocratic rule in his own country,

4:45 and he feared the French Liberals doing in France

4:48 what the Spanish Liberals were doing in Spain.

4:51 That’s called foreshadowing, baby!

4:53 Invading Spain was not wise, but Villèle was not thinking strategically,

4:59 he was only thinking about his own narrow political interests.

5:03 Sharing a border with a Liberal Spain was not an existential threat for France,

5:08 it did not require a military intervention.

5:10 But it was politically inconvenient for France’s Ultra-Conservative faction,

5:15 so they invaded anyways.

5:17 You’d think that the decision to invade a neighbouring country for political

5:22 reasons would spark a lively debate in the French legislature, but it didn’t.

5:27 The legislature was 85% Ultra-Conservative,

5:29 and with the new rigged voting system,

5:33 nobody in the government was particularly worried about the next election.

5:36 Everybody just mindlessly went along with Villèle and the King.

5:41 The fact that this dramatically increased the probability of a World War,

5:45 a Great Power Conflict, didn’t bother any of them.

5:49 That was far less important

5:52 to them than their goofy Ultra-Conservative ideology.

5:56 It’s worth repeating that the French people were not on board with this.

6:00 The Ultra-Conservatives had never been popular,

6:02 they only dominated the legislature because

6:04 the elections had been rigged to favour them.

6:08 The people favoured the Liberals and the Republicans.

6:11 The centrist Liberals hated the invasion for obvious reasons,

6:16 the Spanish Liberals were their ideological brothers.

6:19 The left-wing Republicans hated it too, the Spanish Constitution had been

6:23 an invention of their beloved Emperor Napoleon.

6:25 To the millions of Frenchmen who had at one time served under him,

6:30 the thought of invading another country just

6:33 to undo the work of Napoleon was unthinkable.

6:37 But none of that opposition mattered.

6:39 The invasion of Spain went ahead anyways, and in the next French election,

6:45 96% of the seats went to the Ultra-Conservatives.

6:48 Now there was virtually no domestic political opposition to whatever

6:52 Villèle and the King of France wanted to do.

6:56 But I’ll say it again.

6:58 There was plenty of opposition out on the streets,

7:01 it’s just that the political system had been designed so

7:04 that none of those people were allowed to participate in politics anymore.

7:10 Shortly after this, King Louis XVIII,

7:15 the man who had been restored to the throne after the fall of Napoleon, died.

7:22 He was succeeded by his younger brother,

7:24 a much more autocratic and conservative man who took the name of Charles X.

7:30 Under King Charles and his Ultra-Conservative Prime Minister Villèle,

7:34 Liberals and Republicans working within the government were purged.

7:38 Purged is such a heavy word.

7:40 They were fired, they weren’t killed.

7:43 Villèle then began to systematically roll

7:46 back reforms from the French Revolution

7:49 in an effort to return France to an 18th century political mindset.

7:55 The previous King had promised to never do this, and that promise

7:58 had kept the peace in France for the last 9 years.

8:03 The new King did not feel bound by this promise.

8:07 Bear in mind that none of these moves were popular,

8:10 and the people weren’t afraid to let ‘em know.

8:13 Public outcry reached a fever pitch,

8:15 and in order to insulate insulate the government from any further criticism,

8:20 Villèle clamped down on the Liberal press with heavy censorship laws.

8:24 Again, “maybe if I ignore my problems

8:27 they’ll just go away.” It soon became clear that the new King had a pretty old

8:42 fashioned attitude when it came to his Prime Minister.

8:44 At the beginning of each year the King gave Villèle a list of priorities,

8:48 and it was Villèle’s job throughout the year

8:51 to simply make everything on that list a law.

8:54 It was like the King was his own Prime

8:57 Minister and Villèle was his little assistant or something.

9:00 Under such a system it’s not clear what the purpose of elections would even be,

9:05 there’s not really any point if the King is

9:07 just going to personally dominate the legislature no matter what.

9:11 I frankly don’t understand why Villèle tolerated being humiliated in this way,

9:16 but I guess it was the logical

9:19 conclusion of his extreme Ultra-Conservative ideology.

9:21 One of the things that the King ordered Villèle to do was

9:25 compensate the aristocracy for the loss of their land during the Revolution.

9:30 The land was long gone,

9:31 so what Villèle had to do was pay the rich by taxing the poor.

9:37 It was exactly as popular with the people as you might imagine.

9:41 The new taxes weren’t even sufficient,

9:43 so France had to plunge itself deeply into debt in order to finance this scheme.

9:49 And for what?

9:50 Just to re-establish the supremacy of the French aristocracy.

9:55 The country was politically unstable and the poor

9:58 were still struggling to find enough to eat.

10:01 The King’s political instincts were all out of whack.

10:05 An actual election would have helped the King

10:09 to refocus on what was actually important,

10:15 but he didn’t care about actual elections.

10:22 As the years passed, the King and Villèle continued

10:25 their politically unpopular Ultra-Conservative crusade,

10:28 which had the unintended but in my opinion

10:32 obvious side-effect of making France incredibly politically unstable.

10:37 In 1827, as the King was performing

10:40 a routine inspection of the Paris National Guard,

10:43 the guardsmen surprised him with impromptu cries of “down

10:47 with Villèle!” When officers tried to establish order,

10:50 one guardsman decided to go down in history as an absolute legend

10:54 and punched his superior officer in the face right in front of the King.

10:58 Pretty soon, the officers completely lost control of the men.

11:01 They were unable to stop another guardsman from breaking

11:04 ranks and screaming treasonous stuff right in the King’s face.

11:08 It was a wake-up call for the Ultra-Conservatives.

11:12 The next day, Villèle’s government disbanded the Paris National Guard.

11:16 The backlash was here, and even the rank and file in the military

11:20 were coming out openly against the King.

11:23 Villèle thought that this might just be the beginning

11:26 of a period of unpopularity for the government,

11:28 and so he advised the King to call an early election so

11:32 that they could lock in their legislative majority for the next seven years.

11:36 Yes, they had been working tirelessly this entire

11:39 time to make elections as infrequent as possible.

11:42 When we started this story there was an election every year,

11:45 now there was an election every 7 years.

11:48 If he locked in a legislative majority now,

11:50 Villèle hoped that all of his autocratic reforms

11:53 would be done within the next 7 years,

11:55 and after that maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about elections at all anymore.

12:01 The Liberal and Republican opposition groups saw this as an existential crisis.

12:06 They feared that in 7 years time this may all be gone,

12:10 and that this may literally be the last French election.

12:14 The electoral system was still rigged against the opposition,

12:17 but nevertheless the Liberals and the Republicans threw every resource

12:21 they had into rallying public support and coming out in force.

12:27 Here were the results of the 1827 French election.

12:31 46% of the seats went to a coalition

12:34 of Liberal and Republican opposition groups.

12:36 45% of the seats went to Villèle’s Ultra-Conservative government coalition.

12:43 7% of the seats went to a conservative group that opposed Villèle’s government.

12:48 Even under the rigged electoral system,

12:51 the Liberal opposition unexpectedly won the most seats.

12:54 They were ecstatic.

12:56 The King and Villèle had made a historic blunder.

13:00 To make matters worse,

13:02 it quickly became clear that all of these groups hated each other,

13:06 and so nobody was able to put together a governing majority.

13:10 The King was now stuck with a deadlocked legislature for the next 7 years.

13:16 The King fired Villèle, and selected a new Ultra-Conservative Prime Minister who

13:21 believed that they could find compromises with the Liberals.

13:25 But the Liberals and the other opposition groups were

13:27 high on their electoral victory and out for blood,

13:30 so none of them would agree to work with any Ultra-Conservative Prime Minister.

13:35 If the King really wanted to work with the Liberals

13:38 then he should select a Liberal Prime Minister!

13:40 But he didn’t.

13:42 Over the next year and a half, the legislature accomplished virtually nothing.

13:50 Eventually the King grew frustrated,

13:56 and fired his failed compromise Prime Minister

13:59 in favour of somebody who actually shared his politics.

14:02 In 1829, he appointed named an extreme

14:06 right-wing Ultra-Conservative named Polignac as Prime Minister.

14:10 If a compromise Ultra-Conservative couldn’t figure out

14:13 how to pass anything in the legislature,

14:16 then an extreme Ultra-Conservative definitely wouldn’t either.

14:18 But the King no longer cared.

14:20 He just wanted somebody who shared his views to start pushing people around.

14:25 Just to give you a sense of how extreme this new Prime Minister was,

14:29 during the Napoleonic Wars he was implicated

14:32 in an attempt to assassinate the Emperor, and was imprisoned for 9 years.

14:36 After the King was restored to the throne,

14:39 Polignac’s political right hand man argued for rounding

14:43 up Napoleon’s supporters and putting them to death.

14:47 The Liberal opposition groups, and in particular their Republican allies,

14:51 were justiably alarmed that the King would allow

14:54 men like this to get anywhere near government.

14:58 In addition to all of this, the King

15:01 was sending an undeniable signal with this appointment.

15:04 He was signaling that it did not particularly

15:07 matter what the results of the election were,

15:09 since he was perfectly comfortable running everything

15:13 through his unelected and unrepresentitive Prime Minister.

15:17 Perhaps a taste of what the future of France may look like.

15:28 Around this time, King Charles decided to invade Algeria.

15:33 He had some pretext for this, but the pretext doesn’t really matter.

15:39 The real reason is that France lost virtually all of its

15:43 colonies after its defeat at the end of the Napoleonic Wars,

15:47 and the King felt that establishing a new

15:50 colony in Algeria would restore French prestige.

15:53 I would just ask you, is this a good reason to establish a colony?

15:58 What would our beloved George Canning say about this?

16:01 Canning had argued that colonies were

16:03 only useful insofar as they facilitated trade.

16:05 I don’t recall him saying anything about

16:08 making the King feel better about past humiliations.

16:11 You will see this argument made time and time

16:15 again by mediocre men in the 19th century.

16:18 They will become obsessed with how colonies look on a map,

16:23 and then they will use the map to justify the policy.

16:27 But the point of colonies cannot be how they look on a map.

16:31 A map is an abstraction, a theoretical tool, they’re not real.

16:35 What’s real is conditions on the ground.

16:38 What would the invasion of Algeria do

16:41 to improve the material conditions in France?

16:44 Nothing.

16:44 In fact it was worse than nothing.

16:46 France would have to send 20% of its army overseas.

16:50 It was France’s second unnecessary invasion in only 7 years.

16:55 It destroyed France’s military readiness for basically no reason.

16:59 If there was a crisis in Europe, France would find it difficult to respond.

17:05 It was a risky plan.

17:07 Furthermore, France didn’t really have any money,

17:10 and this invasion would impose a huge financial burden.

17:13 Remember, France was still taxing the poor so

17:16 that they could give money to the rich.

17:19 Any additional taxes to finance this reckless

17:22 invasion would be met with hostility.

17:25 But King Charles and Prime Minister Polignac wanted to do it,

17:31 and so they just did it.

17:35 In 1830, the King opened that year’s deadlocked

17:38 legislature by proposing a relatively modest series of programs,

17:42 but many of the politicians found the way that he opened the session alarming.

17:47 He seemed to subtly threaten violence if any

17:49 of them stood in the way of his legislation.

17:52 He even hinted that he may act

17:55 without the approval of the legislature if necessary,

17:58 describing himself as the true representative of the people,

18:03 not the elected legislature.

18:05 It was a real “mask off” moment for the King.

18:08 Even the King’s own Ultra-Conservatives were bothered.

18:11 A couple of weeks later, the Liberal opposition in the legislature were able

18:16 to gather enough support to push back against the King.

18:19 They sent a letter to the King and told

18:22 him that from now on, the King’s ministers,

18:25 including the Prime Minister, must have the support of the legislature.

18:29 The King couldn’t just appoint whomever he wished.

18:33 Elections had to mean something.

18:35 King Charles was incensed by what he perceived

18:39 to be a direct challenge to his power.

18:41 He accused the Liberals of trying to overthrow the government.

18:44 He decided that he could not work with these people,

18:48 so he immediately dissolved the legislature and called a new election.

18:52 According to his own electoral reforms, this was 4 years ahead of schedule.

18:57 But given the current political climate,

18:59 the Liberal opposition was likely to get stronger in the short term,

19:03 not weaker, and so he thought that he would need

19:09 a friendly legislature to get him through the coming storm.

19:17 Elections were scheduled to begin in late June.

19:19 The date was not an accident.

19:22 The French army was scheduled to land in Algeria in early June,

19:25 so the thought was that by the end of the month there

19:29 would probably be some good news to bolster support for the Ultra-Conservatives.

19:34 One politician begged Prime Minister Polignac to keep the legislature

19:38 in session all the way up until the election,

19:41 because he believed that he could cobble together

19:44 a small working majority of moderates from different factions.

19:47 Polignac responded, “a majority!

19:49 That would really cause me problems; I wouldn’t know what to do with it!” Kind

19:55 of a shocking thing for a politician to say out loud,

19:58 but it really shows how Polignac and the King

20:01 really weren’t interested in Liberal Democracy at all.

20:04 The Ultra-Conservative faction was really lost at sea at this point,

20:09 they only cared about investing more and more

20:12 power into the King and the aristocracy,

20:15 and very little about any other people or institutions.

20:19 Polignac wasn’t even particularly interested in popular support,

20:23 what he wanted to do was make elections no longer matter.

20:33 We must now talk about Article 14 of France’s Constitution,

20:38 also known as the Charter.

20:41 History will hang on the wording of Article 14,

20:43 so let me just give you the whole thing up front.

20:46 “The King is the supreme head of the state,

20:49 commands the land and the sea forces,

20:52 declares war, makes treaties of peace, alliances and commerce,

20:56 appoints to all places of public administration,

21:00 and makes the necessary regulations and ordinances for the execution

21:04 of the laws and the security of the state.” Let’s break it down.

21:09 The King is the head of the state,

21:12 he commands the military, runs foreign policy, and appoints all ministers.

21:16 That’s all very straightforward.

21:18 But then there’s this funny bit at the end,

21:21 “and makes the necessary regulations and ordinances

21:24 for the execution of the laws and the security of the state.” “Regulations

21:29 and ordinences,” that basically means laws, right?

21:34 “And makes the necessary laws for the security of the state.” Huh.

21:40 You see what this is, don’t you?

21:42 If the King pressed a giant red button that said “this is

21:46 a security matter,” he could institute any regulation or law that he wished.

21:51 Who got to decide what was a security matter?

21:54 The King.

21:55 It was a giant loophole in the middle of the French Constitution

21:59 that could theoretically grant the King unlimited power in the name of security.

22:05 The King’s supporters in the Ultra-Conservatives began to argue

22:10 that the unruly Liberal opposition to the King was a security matter,

22:14 and if the upcoming election tipped in the Liberal direction,

22:17 the King could use Article 14 to overturn it.

22:21 Nobody had ever done anything like this before,

22:24 and even the Ultra-Conservatives were split on whether it would even be legal.

22:28 But the Ultra-Conservatives didn’t need to agree.

22:33 Only the King needed to agree.

22:36 After some consideration, the King spoke to his closest ministers.

22:40 If the upcoming election results were not to his liking, he said,

22:45 then he would “make [his] prerogative

22:48 respected.” The King was not being explicit, but everybody took his meaning.

22:53 One way or another, the Liberal opposition would

22:56 be out of power after the next election.

23:04 The French army landed in Algeria in early June,

23:07 and ten days later they won their first significant victory.

23:10 All according to plan.

23:12 On the day that news of the French victory reached Paris,

23:16 the King decided to make a big public spectacle of attending Mass,

23:20 you know, to beef up his religious credibility on the eve of the election.

23:25 As expected, large crowds gathered to catch a glimpse

23:27 of the King as he made his way through the streets.

23:30 But there was no cheering, no waving.

23:33 The crowds just stood there, eerily silent,

23:36 and watching the King like a pack of hungry wolves.

23:43 Voting began shortly after this, and then wrapped up in the third week of July.

23:49 The feeling going into the election was that it might be close.

23:53 It wasn’t close.

23:55 65% of the legislative seats went to the Liberal and Republican opposition.

24:01 32% of the seats went to the King’s Ultra-Conservatives.

24:05 The rest went to smaller groups that also opposed Polignac’s government.

24:10 A massive victory for the Liberals.

24:13 The King and his Ultra-Conservative allies met

24:17 to decide what to do about the election results.

24:21 Discussion centred around Article 14 of the Charter.

24:24 If they argued that the Liberals

24:27 in the legislature were a semi-treasonous faction,

24:30 then the King had the authority under Article 14 of the Charter

24:34 to make the necessary laws for the security of the state.

24:39 After much debate, the King decided to invoke

24:43 Article 14 and use it to do 4 things.

24:47 These would later become known as the Four Ordinences.

24:51 Dissolve the newly elected Liberal-majority legislature.

24:56 Reform the French electoral system and make it pretty

24:59 much impossible for the Liberals to ever win again

25:03 Immediately hold new elections under this new electoral system

25:07 and allow the Ultra-Conservatives to win pretty much every seat.

25:12 Suspend freedom of the press and shut down the Liberal newspapers,

25:16 who the King blamed for his drop

25:19 in popularity and the unexpected election results.

25:22 That’s right, it was the newspapers’ fault,

25:25 not the 10 years of unpopular policies.

25:30 The King’s cousin, Louis-Philippe,

25:32 was not informed that the King was taking this step.

25:36 He learned of the Four Ordinences by reading about it in the newspaper.

25:41 Louis-Philippe was more friendly to the Liberals than his cousin the King was,

25:44 and when he read what the King had done, he told his wife “they’ve done it,

25:49 they’ve mounted a coup d’etat.” Later that day he hosted

25:52 a large group of mostly Liberal supporters at his home, and quite naturally,

25:57 the King’s Four Ordinences were all anybody could talk about.

26:00 In front of all of these people,

26:02 the usually careful Louis-Philippe lost his composure and shouted, “they’re mad!

26:08 They’ll get themselves exiled again!” His Liberal supporters urged him

26:12 to come to Paris and throw his support behind the Liberal opposition.

26:18 Louis-Philippe told them no, he wouldn’t openly go against the King.

26:24 For the time being, he would do nothing.

26:30 In Paris, the Liberal newspapers were not taking this laying down.

26:35 One paper famously wrote, “the legal regime is now interrupted;

26:41 that of force has begun.

26:44 In this situation obedience ceases to be a duty.” Later continuing,

26:49 “France must judge how far it ought to take its resistance.”

26:55 They were coming just a hair shy of openly calling for revolution.

27:05 That evening, soldiers tried to shut down one of the many Liberal newspapers

27:09 that were continuing to operate in violation of the King’s new censorship law.

27:14 This attracted a crowd,

27:16 who began taunting the soldiers by chanting “down with the Bourbons!”

27:20 and “long live the Charter!” The soldiers tried to suppress the crowd,

27:24 but it quickly turned into a riot,

27:26 with mobs roaming the streets and smashing street lamps.

27:31 By pure chance, one of these mobs stumbled across Prime Minister Polignac

27:35 and his Minister of the Navy as they were leaving a cabinet meeting.

27:39 The mob closed in and started pelting the two with rocks.

27:42 The politicians narrowly escaped the mob by jumping into a nearby carriage,

27:47 but not before the Minister of the Navy was badly injured.

27:51 Somehow the French Navy managed to lose a battle on the streets of Paris!

27:56 They really weren’t safe anywhere!

28:01 On July 27th, thousands of soldiers were

28:04 sent to shut down Liberal opposition newspapers,

28:07 which led to widespread protests across Paris.

28:10 First, the soldiers tried to escalate things by charging

28:14 one of the crowds on horseback, which didn’t work.

28:17 Later, they tried toe escalate further

28:19 by firing indescriminately into the crowd.

28:22 21 were killed and scores were wounded.

28:25 As the sun set on a violent day,

28:28 some new Revolutionary solgans were heard in the protests.

28:32 “Down with the Aristocrats!

28:34 Death to the Ministers!” Only 24 hours ago these had been

28:40 Liberal crowds who had been protesting for constitutionalism and a free press.

28:45 Now they were Revolutionary crowds, and they wanted to overthrow the government.

28:53 The violence had only radicalized the people.

28:58 The next day, the crowds were significantly larger.

29:02 The man in charge of defending Paris at this time was major-general Marmont,

29:06 and he had a hell of a problem on his hands.

29:10 His garrison in Paris had been hollowed out for the Algerian campaign,

29:14 and of those that remained,

29:16 most of his higher ranking officers had been sent home so

29:20 that they could vote for the Ultra-Conservatives in the upcoming election.

29:24 Marmont’s garrison was not in any way

29:27 prepared for what they were about to encounter.

29:30 At noon, Marmont moved into Paris with the aim of occupying

29:34 key bridges and public squares where the protests had been the strongest.

29:39 What they found when they entered the city was totally unexpected.

29:43 Within the last 24 hours,

29:45 veterans of the Napoleonic Wars had grabbed their dusty

29:49 old muskets and gone over to help the protesters.

29:52 The veterans had each adopted large groups of protesters and in only a day,

29:58 they taught them a few tricks.

30:00 As Marmont’s soldiers advanced through the streets,

30:03 they ran into thousands- yes thousands- of barricades.

30:08 These were tall defensive structures built out

30:11 of ripped up cobblestones and furniture and wagons

30:14 and parts of buildings and anything else

30:17 that the protesters could get their hands on.

30:19 The taller ones could be 3 meters high, which for the Americans in the audience,

30:24 is approximately “learn how long a metre is high.” Quite high.

30:29 The old veterans instructed the protesters not only to build the barricades,

30:33 but also to occupy the buildings on each

30:35 side of the streets approaching the barricades,

30:38 so that any enemy soldiers would be hit with musketfire from three directions.

30:42 They also loaded up the buildings with cobblestones and roof tiles

30:47 and other things that unarmed protesters could hurl down at the soldiers.

30:51 Let’s not be cute, by “other things” I mean human excriment.

30:56 As groups of soldiers advanced into the city,

31:00 they bumped into barricades that hadn’t been there last night.

31:03 When they turned around,

31:05 they bumped into new barricades that hadn’t been there a few hours earlier.

31:08 It was like being trapped in a maze, but the walls kept shifting,

31:12 and also somebody kept dumping human excriment into it.

31:15 Marmot had not thought to send his soldiers into the city with supplies,

31:21 and so the whole garrison spent 8 or more hours covered in filth,

31:25 frantically marching in circles with no food or water.

31:29 Morale was at an all-time low.

31:31 A great many soldiers either surrendered

31:34 to the protesters or defected to join their cause.

31:37 As the sun began to set,

31:40 many of the soldiers had to make direct assaults on the barricades

31:45 just to escape the city and make it back to camp.

31:49 Late in the day, the Liberal opposition opened negotiations with Marmont.

31:54 They told him that as a precondition to any talks,

31:58 the King must revoke the Four Ordinences.

32:01 Marmont expressed his sympathy,

32:02 and agreed to take their demand directly to Prime Minister Polignac.

32:06 The Prime Minister flatly rejected this preliminary demand,

32:11 and told Marmont that there would not

32:15 be any further meetings with the delegates.

32:18 Marmot was stunned at this response, and decided to take the highly unorthodox

32:23 step of writing to the King personally.

32:26 He wrote, “This is no longer a riot.

32:30 It is a Revolution.” Continuing, “I think it is urgent that your majesty profit

32:35 without delay from the overtures that are made to him.

32:38 The honour of the Crown can still be saved;

32:42 tomorrow perhaps it will be too late.

32:44 I am taking measures to pacify the revolt.

32:48 The troops will be ready at noon,

32:51 but I await with impatience your majesty’s orders.” To be clear,

32:55 this was way out of line,

32:57 this was a local military officer going around the Prime

33:01 Minister so that he could advise the King on political matters.

33:05 But Marmont was desperate,

33:07 and nobody above him seemed to be taking the situation seriously.

33:11 The King wrote back, and basically told Marmont to “hold steady.”

33:16 Marmot’s pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

33:21 The next morning, Marmont pulled back to a defensive position.

33:27 He wouldn’t be tricked into another costly engagement like yesturday.

33:32 Almost immediately, 15 or 20% of Marmont’s 12,000

33:36 soldiers defected and went over to join the protesters.

33:41 In order to fill holes in his defensive position,

33:44 Marmont ordered his men to pull back into an even tighter circle,

33:49 which the soldiers incorretly interpretted as a retreat,

33:52 which triggered a chain reaction of even more defections.

33:55 By noon, the defections were totally out of control,

33:59 and in order to stem the losses the King fired

34:02 Marmont and ordered the garrison to withdraw from the city,

34:06 turning a false retreat into a real one.

34:09 The protesters had captured Paris.

34:14 The whole thing only took 3 days.

34:20 Old Man Talleyrand, who had lost faith in the King and had

34:24 been helping to guide the Liberal opposition from behind the scenes,

34:28 was perhaps the first person to fully understand the significance of this.

34:32 As he and his political allies watched the soldiers leaving the city,

34:37 he took out his pocketwatch and declared, “Twenty-nineth of July,

34:41 five minutes past midday, the elder branch of the house of Bourbon has ceased

34:49 to reign.” The Liberal opposition was blown away at their own success.

34:57 They had been fighting to overturn the Four Ordinences

35:00 and squeeze some political concessions out of the King,

35:03 and now, without even really intending to do so,

35:06 they had overthrown the monarchy.

35:09 That evening, the King finally tried to negotiate.

35:12 If he had done that yesterday when Marmont asked him to it may have helped,

35:17 but now it was too late.

35:20 The Liberals controlled Paris, and they got to decide what happened next.

35:29 The next day, the Liberals and their Republican

35:32 allies were locked in a heated internal debate.

35:35 Some argued for using their new position to overthrow the entire system,

35:39 while others urged caution.

35:41 The other Great Powers were monitoring the situation in France carefully,

35:46 and if they caught even a whiff of something resembling the French Revolution,

35:51 most of them were prepared to march into France to stop it.

35:55 This is how you get a World War!

35:58 As if to drive this point home,

36:01 as the Liberal opposition gathered to debate their next move,

36:04 they could hear cries of “Long Live Napoleon!” coming from the streets.

36:08 The People were in a dangerous mood,

36:11 they seemed fully prepared to do the whole French Revolution over again.

36:15 Although it must be said that the crowd

36:18 was a little misguided in their sloganeering,

36:20 Napoleon was dead, he wasn’t long living nothing.

36:23 The Liberals finally figured out what there demands would be.

36:27 They demanded that King Charles be removed from power,

36:30 and that France transition to a limited

36:33 constitutional monarchy kind of modelled after Great Britain.

36:37 This, they believed,

36:38 would be just radical enough to satisfy the Republicans and prevent a civil war,

36:44 but not so radical that it would freak

36:47 out the Great Powers and trigger a World War.

36:50 The problem was figuring out who to replace the King with.

36:54 Some of the more radical Republicans suggested Napoleon’s 19 year old son,

36:59 but that idea was dismissed out of hand.

37:02 Remember, they were trying to not freak out the Great Powers.

37:07 Others suggested the King’s 9 year old grandson [English] Henri,

37:10 or [Frenchified] Henri I guess,

37:12 but the mainstream Liberals rejected this over fears that the tyrant

37:16 King Charles would continue to wield power from behind the scenes.

37:19 They settled on the one person that they could all agree on.

37:24 The King’s 56 year old cousin, Louis-Philippe.

37:28 The Liberal politicians,

37:30 by far the largest part of the coalition of opposition groups,

37:34 strongly favoured Louis-Philippe,

37:35 as it was widely known that he was a closet Liberal.

37:40 The more conservative members of the group felt that they could hold their noses

37:44 and back Louis-Philippe since they could rest

37:47 easy knowing that the monarchy would survive.

37:51 The Radical Republicans, who were initially pushing for Napoleon’s son,

37:56 also felt that they could hold their noses and get behind Louis-Philippe.

38:01 What made Louis-Philippe unique was that he

38:04 had fought with distinction in the Republican army.

38:07 That was a big deal to the veterans of the Napoleonic Wars.

38:11 He may have been royalty, but in a way he was one of them.

38:16 It was also noteworthy to the veterans

38:19 that even after circumstances forced him to flee France,

38:23 Louis-Philippe never took up arms against his own country.

38:27 Many exiled aristocrats did, but Louis-Philippe always refused.

38:33 That was a big deal.