Die imaginierte Restauration: Reprasentation der Monarchie im Frankreich Ludwigs XVIII

Abstract

How to legitimate the monarchy in Restoration France is the subject of this imaginative and stimulating dissertation. As the Bourbons were soon on their travels again, it would seem that they really had learned nothing from twenty-five years of exile. Yet, in their fumbling way, they did show some awareness of the need for a new semiotic agenda. When the comte d’Artois entered Paris in the wake of the allied armies on 14 April 1814, he wore the provocative white cockade of counter-revolution—but he sported it on the uniform of a National Guardsman. His elder brother, Louis XVIII, had himself painted draped in all the regalia of an old-regime monarch—but chose to present himself as a jovial, approachable father-figure, stretching out a helping hand. One problem they never could overcome was their association with defeat and humiliation, especially after the Hundred Days. Although they pulled down Napoleon's statue from its lofty perch on the Place Vendôme, they had to leave the column itself, too potent a symbol of French victories to be demolished. Much more adept at public relations were the Bourbon ladies, tapping into a strong current of emotional nostalgia. Natalie Scholz pays particular attention to the Duchesse d’Angoulême, eldest daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who was successfully presented as the ‘French Antigone’, reconciling nation and royal family. Also discussed in revealing detail is the murder in 1820 of the Duc de Berry, Artois’ son and so heir-presumptive to the throne, which was the ‘great media event’ of the Restoration.