page_title: François Guizot
section_title: The second Soult government
hierarchical_section_title: François Guizot / The second Soult government
caption_attribution_description: English: Pelham Crescent, London SW7This is a photo of listed building number 1357470.
context_page_description: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. A moderate liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, he worked to sustain a constitutional monarchy following the July Revolution of 1830.
  He then served the "citizen king" Louis Philippe, as Minister of Education, 1832–37, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister 1840–1847, and finally Prime Minister of France from 19 September 1847 to 23 February 1848. Guizot's influence was critical in expanding public education, which under his ministry saw the creation of primary schools in every French commune. But as a leader of the "Doctrinaires", committed to supporting the policies of Louis Phillipe and limitations on further expansion of the political franchise, he earned the hatred of more left-leaning liberals and republicans through his unswerving support for restricting suffrage to propertied men, advising those who wanted the vote to "enrich yourselves" through hard work and thrift.
context_section_description: Thus began, under dark and adverse circumstances, on 29 October 1840, the important administration in which Guizot remained the master-spirit for nearly eight years. He himself took the office of minister for foreign affairs, and upon the retirement of Marshal Soult, he became prime minister. His first care was the maintenance of peace and the restoration of amicable relations with the other powers of Europe. His success gave unity and strength to the moderate liberal party, who now felt that they had a great leader at their head.
  During Guizot's tenure as foreign minister, he and Lord Aberdeen, the foreign secretary to Sir Robert Peel, carried on well, and thus they secured France and Britain in the entente cordiale. Part of the formation of the entente came about when Guizot secured the transfer of Napoleon's ashes from St. Helena to the French government. The opposition in France denounced Guizot's foreign policy as basely subservient to England. He replied in terms of unmeasured contempt: "You may raise the pile of calumny as high as you will; vous n'arriverez jamais a la hauteur de mon dédain!" In 1845 British and French troops fought side by side for the first time in the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata.
  The fall of Peel's government in 1846 changed these intimate relations; and the return of Palmerston to the foreign office led Guizot to believe that he was again exposed to the passionate rivalry of the British cabinet. A friendly understanding had been established between the two courts with reference to the future marriage of the young queen of Spain. The language of Lord Palmerston and the conduct of Sir Henry Bulwer (afterwards Lord Dalling) at Madrid led Guizot to believe that this understanding was broken, provoking the Affair of the Spanish Marriages after Guizot came to believe that Britain intended to place a Coburg on the throne of Spain. Determined to resist any such intrigue, Guizot and the king plunged headlong into a counter-intrigue, wholly inconsistent with their previous engagements to Britain and fatal to the happiness of the queen of Spain. By their influence she was urged into a marriage with a despicable offset of the house of Bourbon, and her sister was at the same time married to the youngest son of the French king, in direct violation of Louis Philippe's promises. This transaction, although it was hailed at the time as a triumph of the policy of France, was in truth as fatal to the monarch as it was discreditable to the minister. It was accomplished by a mixture of secrecy and violence. It was defended by subterfuges. Its immediate effect was to destroy the Anglo-French alliance, and to throw Guizot into closer relations with the reactionary policy of Metternich and the Northern courts.
  His first object as prime minister was to unite and discipline the moderate liberal party, which had been broken up by previous dissensions and ministerial changes. In this he entirely succeeded by his courage and eloquence as a parliamentary leader, and by the use of all those means of influence which France supplied to a dominant minister. No one ever doubted the purity and disinterestedness of Guizot's own conduct. He despised money; he lived and died poor; and though he encouraged the fever of money-getting in the French nation, his own habits retained their primitive simplicity. But he did not disdain to use in others the baser passions from which he was himself free. Some of his instruments were mean; he employed them to deal with meanness after its kind.
  In 1846 the opposition accused the government of buying the votes of the electorate. Guizot acknowledged that corruption happened but the government could not really prevent it. Non-voters exaggerated the occurrences of corruption to point to their need for enfranchisement. Guizot utterly failed to satisfy the demand for expansion of suffrage. Some scholars point out that corruption, while certainly present, did not have a large effect on the voting records of those in the Chamber of Deputies.
  The strength of Guizot's oration was his stra
caption: Guizot's house whilst Ambassador in London, 21 Pelham Crescent, London SW7
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