# The Royal Family of France (Henry)/Legitimacy, or Right

VI.
LEGITIMACY, OR RIGHT.
"Legitimacy," wrote the eminent French statesman Royer Collard, "is the grandest and most fruitful idea ever conceived by modern nations. It is a living representative of individual right, the noble inheritance of humanity, of which, if we are once deprived, nothing more remains to us on earth. Legitimacy belongs to us more than to any other nation, because no other Royal Family possesses it as wholly and as fully as the Royal Family of France does."
M. Guizot said: "Hereditary right and legitimacy must exist everywhere, that society may be permanent and authority duly exercised. The heredity of thrones has no other aim than to place right on the throne, that so it may exist everywhere. A legitimate King cannot be made, any more than can a free people. The idea and the feeling of right, which is the true principle of the institution in both cases, and is its motive power, cannot permeate it throughout in a day. All things in their origin are the product of violence, and violence distorts them even whilst creating them. The essence of right is sullied and defaced by the action of the unruly passions of violence. Time must take it in hand, free it, and foster it, cleanse it from the coarse alloy which error and violence have mingled with it, till at last it stands forth brilliant and pure. When, therefore, a true legitimate rule is available,, one whose claims are the result of centuries, and which, though suspended, have yet never been destroyed; when this legitimate rule has been and is ready again to become the institution I have spoken of, it would surely be a singular folly not to welcome it, not to strive earnestly to realize all the advantages it offers, instead of setting oneself the task of remaking what already exists, of ​encountering a thousand perils in recreating for the benefit of the future that which can be preserved and adapted to the present.
Firmly convinced that the legitimacy of Thrones is an excellent institution, and that to be an institution such legitimacy must be of ancient date—otherwise it is not one—I ask myself: " What disastrous blindness can lead the Revolution to ignore or refuse such a benefit?"
Pasquier said: "Liberty has no surer, no holier, no more inviolable guarantee in France than the Royal Family. Legitimacy is the natural order of things; it accepts no other forms than such as are true; once accepted, it respects them." "There is something more worthy of respect than crowd, genius, glory of war; and this is Right" (Thiers).
Yes. Legitimacy is undying, and this is the reason why the Royal Family of France has reigned for centuries; that it has been restored six times; that it has survived terrific crises; and that the friends of France together with Europe are convinced that a fusion between the two branches of the Royal Family would assure the political and social future of that country and give more rest to other nations.
In a certain section of the political world—and more so than anywhere else among the new nobility created by Napoleon—it is usual to speak of a Monarchical Restoration as a chimerical idea, and to proclaim that the best chances have long been shipwrecked on the rocks of Frohsdorf; in fact, the younger generation of Englishmen, whether in their Public Schools or without, only hear of Imperial and Republican families in France, and are told that no French Royal Family exists. Men hope by this to widen the breach between parties, to deepen the trench that divides them. Such an event, they also say, as a Monarchical Restoration never happens twice. It has already happened six times! Revolutions are not novelties in the world, still less are family discords. Let us look at home and turn over the pages of our own History of England! As early as the time of Saint Louis, the powerful subjects of his kingdom, in open rebellion, wished to overthrow the government of Blanche de Castille and hand over the French Crown to the Sire de Coucy. A nobility whose duty it was to defend the Throne, now turned ​its weapons and its courage against the Royal child, supported by England, who sought to derive advantage from these civic struggles. Later on, we find Stephen Marcel leagued with a Prince of the Royal Blood who coveted the Throne, unscrupulously stirring up the inhabitants of Paris against their legitimate King in the name of Demagogism, that infernal cry of furious factionists who ever and everywhere pander to the vicious tastes of the vile multitude and to popular prejudices. He reigned for a short time, upheld by violence, till terror gave place to the curses of the people whom he had deceived and seduced.
This reminds one of Mirabeau's reflections upon the "people " as he then, speaking from his seat in Parliament, was turned round and rebuked the demagogues in a language which was worthy of his name as the French Demosthenes: "It is strange that men united together in pursuit of the same aim, animated by the same indestructible longing, and who should be drawn more tightly together by the most determined opposition, should, misled by a singular mania, a deplorable blindness, fall foul of each other. Men, who thus replace their devotion to their country by the susceptibility of self-love^ are ever ready to betray each other to popular prejudice! A few days ago men sought to carry me in triumph, and now they hawk through the streets with loud cries: The great Treason of Mirabeau!
"I did not need this lesson to feel convinced that there was but a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock, Yet, the man who fights for right reason, for his country, does not readily acknowledge himself defeated. He who is conscious of having deserved well of his country and knows that he can still serve it; he who is not sated by an ephemeral celebrity and who despises the fame of a day for the sake of true glory; he who wishes to speak the truth and to work for the welfare of the State, irrespective of fickle public opinion; such a man bears within himself the reward of his deeds, the charm of his sufferings, the price of his dangers. He must leave his harvest, his future destiny, which is that of his reputation, to the care of time, the incorruptible judge who renders justice to all men."
In 1426 all seemed lost: a woman, Joan of Arc, defeats the English, takes the lawful heir, Charles VII., by the hand, leads ​him to the throne, July 17th, 1429, and vanishes with the crown of martyrdom on her brow.
"Is this kingdom to fall? Is this glorious land, the fairest the sun shines on, to be kept in bondage? Are we never again to have a King of our own, a Sovereign sprung from the soil? Shall our country no more possess a King that never dies!" (Schiller: The Maiden of Orlean.) At this period the law was powerless, all classes, divided against each other, no longer acknowledged a legitimate Government. In the midst of the general confusion and anarchy violence alone could make itself heard.
However, after many lapses, the French rally once more, rise from their degradation, are ashamed of their fetters: all the supporters and sympathizers of the Monarchy draw together again; and their union was made closer and stronger, thanks to the national energy. The re-establishment of Charles VII. on the throne of his ancestors was the work of the nation. In this violent crisis. Royalty, as it were, recruited itself from its own substance, as do those robust constitutions which throw off of themselves unhealthy humours and regain all the vigour of their natural strength. On the death of Henry III., stabbed to the heart with a dagger by the friar James Clement, at Saint Cloud, the League organizes and countenances rebellion, to prevent the accession of Henry IV., the Heir Apparent to the Throne of France. The Leaguers, headed by Mayenne, spare nothing to perpetuate their usurpation—secret meetings, a sworn covenant, civil war, murder, barricades, foreign aid, perpetual abeyance of the Royal Family. Could anything more be done?
The storm disperses, Henry IV. re-enters Paris, after the battles of Arques and Ivry, a conqueror and peacemaker. On the battlefield of Ivry were uttered by the King these beautiful and famous words, speaking with so irresistible a force to the minds and hearts of Frenchmen: "Enfants, si vous perdez vos enseignes, ralliez-vous à mon panache blanc; vous le trouverez toujours au chemin de l'honneur et de la gloire!"—
The Fronde, with its retinue of conspirators, meets with no better success than did the League: princes, nobles, citizens murderous and witty, great in riots and sonnets, carry on a war of musketeers and alguazils. A paltry revolution without cause, without means, ​without dignity, and without result. A ridiculous preface to the grandest reign in the History of France, to that unrivalled era which saw the French victorious on land and sea in fifty battles; the Pyrenees opened to make way for its Royal Princes; the annexation of Flanders, Strasburg, and Alsace; which gave birth to Bossuet and Fénélon, to Racine and Corneille, to Boileau and Moliere, to Conde and Turenne, to Duquesne and Tourville; which saw created its ports, its roads, its fortifications, and witnessed the building of Versailles and the Louvre; and which, in spite of the mischances which are apt to befall all greatness in this world, arrested the foreigner at the gates of Denain, defeated him by the valour of French officers and the heroism of their King, supported by Marshal de Villars, and closed with victory an age whose brilliancy eclipses that of Francis I. and Leo X.
The memorable Revolution of 1793, the most terrible among the revolutions of Europe, testifies still more strongly to the exclusive and imperative incapacity of French innovators and political adventurers, whose shadowy training, jealous sentiments, and "swashbuckler" traditions constitute what to-day's Frenchmen call a Republican policy, and which they put forward once more and try to filter into the popular imagination. On October 16th, 1789, the National Assembly decrees that the title of the King of France shall be changed to that of the King of the French; and, the National Convention having opened on September 17th, 1792, Royalty falls on the 21st, abolished by a decree, and the Bourbon Family, perpetually banished (December 20th), King Louis XVI., Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the Royal Family confined in the Temple excepted. Who then could oppose these horrible regenerators in their work of blood and crime? When they have killed and assassinated to their heart's content, when they have cleansed prisons, palaces, and seminaries, instead of raising a lasting monument to their Republic, they end by sending each other to pay their dues to the executioner. Lastly, instead of their Kingly father, whom they sent to the scaffold, they accept a new master, a military despot, a tyrant! In truth, Burke in England had seen clearly the inevitable and proselytizing course of French Revolutionists, and eloquently declared it in his manifesto, *' Reflections on the French Revolution," and ​went even so far as to sever his friendship of years with Fox, who, on May 6th, 1791, was speaking in high praise of the Revolutionary Constitution.
France was then depopulated. There remained only widows and orphans; trade and manufactures were ruined. French liberty was confiscated; much of the glory of war was hers, but with a policy that may be characterized as insane and gambling. Such was this first Napoleonic orgie which victory cannot justify; the march from Cadiz to Moscow, from Thabor to Antwerp, strewing the road with the wounded and the dead, cannot be balanced even by the creation of an Empire which vanished in a quarter of an hour, only leaving an onerous and awkward tradition behind. Skill and luck had served him in his early career. He would tempt Providence and dared presume he always could expect the same advantages, because the magnates of all lands bowed before him as if he were Pharaoh. "Events are in the saddle and they ride mankind." The realities of life fought against Bonaparte's enthusiastic rashness, and the French of to-day are not more Imperialist than they are Catholic. Man is great in his likeness to God only when he creates, that is, when he makes something out of what is insignificant; and when from the hundred and twenty counties of 18 12 he leaves nothing but a bronze column, a depopulated country, ruined and robbed of the frontiers it formerly possessed, such a man may be a great leader, a successful soldier, but History will not style him a great king nor a clever politician. Then comes one of those despicable praetorian revolutions held up to scorn by Tacitus. The first Bonaparte thought to save his dynasty in reviving Jacobinism. The bloody spectre could protect neither uncle nor nephew, nor even that heroic, virtuous, generous and good young man who fell in a gallant struggle, single-handed, against a band of Zulu warriors, the enemies of his English home! Unhappy child, offspring of that marvellous adventure that wedded a soldier to the daughter of the Cæsars, and whose fate is, after the National misfortunes of 1870-71, the most strange amongst all these extraordinary events. We are not stating this as our opinion, but we may be allowed to say that he might, and most likely would, have done great things for France; but France has never been an easy nation to ​govern, while she has been signally wanting in the power of governifig herself. We only pity the masses of the peasantry—poor people with traditions of serfage in their veins, the prey to the rottenness of audacious quacks who pilfer from their electors' pockets while parading before the eyes of the latter the "cloud-compelling" Bismarck and the "standing menace" of Metz. Hence her history is a continuous series of reactions, every one of which has brought new trials and presented fresh problems to be solved by her rulers. Comfort will be found for the exiled, widowed and childless mother (one of the most afflicted personages in modern history) that through the undying hatreds, painful jealousies, and rivalries between Frenchmen, the present times of anxious politics and international disquietude, should her son have been recalled to France, he would have met with a heritage of thorns only, of which the honour and glory might have been brilliant, but the burden could not be light, nor, in all probability, the possession lasting.
After the Reign of Terror, of Absolutism, of tempest, the barque of Robert the Strong and of Saint Louis rode into port for the sixth time: "The French nation freely call to the Throne of France Louis-Stanislas-Xavier of France, brother to the last King, and after him the other members of the House of Bourbon, according to the former rule" (Senatus-consultum of April 6th, 1814).
We have now reached 1815; these great lessons should surely be turned to account. More enlightened as to their rights and as to their failings by the shortcomings of their forefathers, Frenchmen should have honoured their memory by making use of their experience. Benjamin Constant, a Tribune during Napoleon's consulship, said once: "We must study the future by looking back on the past, and drawing from it lessons of wisdom." The wicked ever prove far more logical, and will only engage men of a tried fealty in their ranks.
What is the moral of these terrible upheavings of the State, followed by beneficent Restorations? What do we always find hovering above the Revolutionary gulfs? The Royal Family and the legitimate Monarchy of France, to-day represented by the lawful King of the French nation and the sole rightful Sovereign, Henry V., Duke de Bordeaux and Count de Chambord. Henry V. (born September 29th, 1820) is the only son of the Duke de Berry ​and Princess Caroline of Naples, the grandson of Charles X. (Count d'Artois) and great nephew of the unfortunate monarch Louis XVI. The sole reproach, not unexpectedly flung by anti-monarchical men at the head of this Royal Prince, is the ever-new one flung at the head of every Royal Prince deserving the name of such. Henri V.'s crime can be none other but to have been well educated, and to have kept faithful to the duties of man towards his God, his fellow-countrymen and his native land: in short, Henri V. is the very scarecrow of self-seeking adventurers, of men of duplicity and dissimulation: in short, of either ignorant or arrogant men whom it "pays" to believe and to make others believe in falsehoods. His mother, gentle and pious-hearted—nay, are the Royal Princesses of France known to have proved ever otherwise?—had ever watched over him in all outward changes, assiduously keeping human pieties and good affections alive in her Royal son. Our words doubtless may sound harsh to the ears of men whose motto is: virtus post nuimnos! However, truth ever finds a high-born heart ready to stand by champions of religion and patriotism.
The Heir Apparent is Louis Philippe's grandson, viz., the Count de Paris (born in 1838), eldest son of the Duke d'Orléans (run away with by his horses and killed in jumping from his carriage at Neuilly, July 13th, 1842) and Princess Helena of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The brother to the Comte de Paris is the Duke de Chartres (born in 1842), Colonel commanding the 1 2th Regiment of Chasseurs (cavalry) now stationed at Rouen. Lieutenant-General H.R.H. the Duke d'Aumale is the uncle to these Princes of the Royal Blood of France. (Read " Genealogical Tables," p. 14.)
Providence placed the destiny of France in the hands of this Royal Family, and no one has the right to abrogate that succession. Unless Royalty and Monarchy, under the present system of morality prevalent now, more than ever, in democratic Parliaments and ​among sets of wild teachers and harsh zealots all over Europe, means a family of Punchinellos glittering with gold embroidery and of feathered Judies paid for their services rendered in enlivening the local trade of some used-up mart, or in performing before a swarm of aristocrats and plutocrats as white as powder and pomatum can make them? God forbid Royalty and monarchy ever came down to that!
Now it is an universally acknowledged fact that the French nation has never initiated a revolution by its own impulse. Every one knows that Louis le Débonnaire, Charles, surnamed the Bald, Charles le Gros, and Charles the Simple were deposed by the powerful nobles of the kingdom, and not by the people. We know that it was not the people who wished to raise Coucy to the throne of Saint Louis;—that it was a prince of the Royal Blood who strove to usurp the throne of John the Good during his captivity in London;—that it was a Duke of Burgundy who recalled the English to France;—that the Guises wished to rob Henry III. and Henry IV. of the crown in order to place it on their own brows. We also know that it was Ann Maria Louise d'Orléans, best known as Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had the boldness to order the guns to be fired from the Bastille upon the troops of Louis XIV. All these revolutions were bred and fermented at Paris by unauthorized assemblies, or by meetings of the riotous riff-raff of the capital of France, as in all countries, reckless mobs, recalling to Englishmen the evil days of 1848 in the north of England, so ably and quickly squashed by Sir Robert Peel;—mobs bent on the gratification of selfish or vindictive passions, and ever instigated by desperate leaders and secret societies prompt to turn to profit the confusion of popular excitement, and ready at a moment's notice to tear down all existing institutions for the purpose of re-casting them in moulds of their own devising; whose action is, like that of French Republicans, mistaken for the movement of the nation, and deliberately daring to take into their hands the destinies of a country, wholly unpractised as they are in the science of government and committed to doctrines subversive of society.
"Paris," writes an old historian, "contains big heaps of 'vermine' and 'fripouille,' a large number of discontented, ambitious ​and idle men, ever on the scent for better times, ever ready to oppose Law and to overthrow liberty, wicked, perverse, and perjured men." "The age that witnessed the fall of Monarchy," wrote the illustrious M. Guizot, "saw its resurrection. The men who overthrew it restored it; the powers it condemned had been absorbed into it; it gives to social life in the past and in the future that breadth and stability which are so essentially necessary to our age." All the experience of the last three or four years is of service to understand the inactivity and retirement of French Republicans who have tasted the "sweets" of office. They are behaving in an amazingly prudent manner now!
A few weeks ago, in the form of a Letter to the notorious advocate of marriage divorce for French people, Alexandre Dumas fils explained to M. Naquet his reasons for not adhering to the Republic. He "prefers to remain independent" (we regret A. Dumas' indifference), but "confesses a decided leaning towards a constitutional monarchy, which in England has produced many great statesmen; whereas, with the exception of the honoured Lazare Nicholas Carnot, the three Republics have seen none." Dumas wittily argues with full truth, that "when one man rules he can be kept in order; but when all are kings; what is to be done with them if they prove restive? Universal franchise has to be flattered like a Sovereign, for Sovereign it is, only it is a Sovereign with millions of arms, a stomach, no head, and a crown on. It is something like a crab with a sidelong action."
Stability in social and political life is all the more needful when we consider that the foundation of new dynasties upheaves with violence and agitation, with awful struggles and loss of life the age in which they occur. It is only by the struggle between opposite interests or rival ambitions that the stronger or the cleverer leader ends by compelling submission; and it is only when this submission is given unanimously and voluntarily that his authority is established.
From this universally-felt need sprung the principle of succession to the Throne, to see a Sovereign on the Throne "par son droit." This principle is a natural development, it could not but exist. The conviction as to its utility caused it to be adopted. It has taken the name of genuine, lawful succession, or legitimacy. ​Legitimacy therefore was established for the benefit of nations, not for that of a Royal Family. It acquires power and brilliancy in proportion as its personification in the Royal Family becomes ancient; men honour that which is consecrated by the hand of Time. Prayer becomes more easily recollected in a temple whose vaulted roof is darkened by the lapse of centuries, than in the light and brilliant edifices of modern construction. The countless generations who have knelt in the same spot, have uttered the same words, have taken the same oaths, have wept the same tears, have rejoiced in the same hope, add the force of example to the power of precept. Time thus transforms the act of reason, which founded legitimacy, into a feeling of affection, gratitude and respect.
* ↑ Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in one of her letters to her uncle (King Leopold of Belgium) at the time of this terrible misfortune, exclaims: "Perhaps poor Chartres is saved great sorrow and grief. Him we must not pity."
* ↑ The eldest son of the Comte de Paris is H.R.H. Prince Louis Philippe, Duke d'Orlèans, at present a pupil of the College Stanislas (Paris).