View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of East Anglia digital repository Right-Wing Refugees and British Politics, 1830-1871 Matthew Ian Brand PhD University of East Anglia School of History 2016 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 Abstract This thesis investigates the role of right-wing refugees in British politics during the middle years of the nineteenth century, considering the relationships which these refugees established with British politicians, and the difficulties which their multifarious activities created for the makers of British foreign policy. Whereas the contribution of left-wing refugees to British politics and diplomacy during the Victorian era has been considered at length by numerous historians, the relationships which their right-wing counterparts formed with British politicians and the diplomatic concerns which they created have found little attention. This thesis seeks to redress this imbalance by analysing an overlooked but nevertheless important series of networks and controversies in which these exiles became involved during the tumultuous middle years of the nineteenth century. The study first considers the largely diplomatic implications of the presence of the former Charles X of France and his court in Britain during 1830-32, before turning to the difficulties and opportunities which both the Carlist and Miguelite pretenders and their refugee supporters presented for British governments and politicians alike throughout the 1830s and 1840s. The next three chapters consider the apogee of refugee influence over British politics during the years 1848-50, when the victims of the European revolutions of 1848 intrigued with allies in both Britain and continental Europe alike. The final two chapters then chart the rise of the refugee Orléans branch of the French royal family into highly-regarded political actors, whilst considering the diplomatic implications of their presence in Britain. This study suggests that whereas left-wing refugees boasted a modest political legacy and provoked several international controversies, those of the right not only enflamed diplomatic dispute but often actively intervened in British high politics. It therefore posits that refugees played a far wider and more important role in nineteenth-century Britain than previously noted. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 1. Introduction 5 2. A Miserable Emigration ? The French Bourbons, 1830-32 27 3. Carlist and Miguelite Refugees, 1832-51 47 4. Conservative Political Networks, 1848-49 91 5. The Whig government and the Exiles, 1848-49 124 6. Dynasty, Government and Conspiracy, 1848-50 147 7. Orléans and Orleanists, 1850-57 167 8. The Orléans in Exile, 1857-71 198 9. Conclusion 239 10. Bibliography 244 Appendix: French and Spanish Royal Family Trees 286 3 Acknowledgements In writing such a ‘great work’ (as Thomas Otte was so kind to dub this study), one accumulates a great number of debts. Based as it is on substantial archival research, my grateful thanks go out to those who allowed me to use manuscript material, and their hardworking staff, especially those of the British, French and Czech National Archives, the Royal Archives, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Somerset History Centre and the University of Southampton Library, where so much of this research took place. The correspondence between Henry Reeve and Francois Guizot is quoted by permission of the syndics of Cambridge University Library. I should like to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from material in the Royal Archives. I am incredibly grateful to the School of History at UEA, where I have learnt so much on my academic journey since arriving in Norwich as an undergraduate in the autumn of 2007. My greatest thanks go to my supervisors, Geoff Hicks and Tony Howe, for their encouragement, advice, knowledge, patience and suggested avenues of research. Finally, this study owes a great deal to the support of my friends and family. 4 1: Introduction 1 The Right-Wing Exiles of the Mid-Nineteenth Century During the late eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth, Britain received innumerable conservative or right-wing refugees. But although the histories of the émigrés of the French ancien regime and later liberal and radical refugees have been charted, the right-wing refugees of the mid-nineteenth century have been ignored, in spite of their high contemporary profile. 2 After the French July Revolution of 1830, Charles X and his court fled to Britain; his successor Louis Philippe, along with his court and ministers, most notably François Guizot, made the same journey after another revolution in 1848; and in the flurry of revolutions that followed, the Orleanist exiles were joined by the fallen Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich and the Prince of Prussia (later Wilhelm I of Germany).3 Others arrived at different junctures. The Spanish pretender Don Carlos sought refuge after military defeat in 1834, only to escape and wage civil war whilst fellow-exiles intrigued in his favour; Carlos’ son Count Montemolin escaped house arrest in France in 1846, to promote his claim to the Spanish throne; and the fallen Portuguese usurper Dom Miguel fled from Rome in 1847 with the hope of exploiting civil war in Portugal. Further French politicians including Adolphe Thiers arrived after President Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état in December 1851. Among the most high-profile of these refugees, only the Orléans branch of the French royal family resided in Britain for a decade or more. Nevertheless, these exiles possessed either the political capital to influence British politicians, or enough support abroad to create diplomatic concerns, or indeed both. One of Charles X’s advisers could have precipitated war with France; Don Carlos’ escape escalated civil conflict in Spain; Dom Miguel’s departure would have 1 The words ‘refugee’ and ‘exile’ were used interchangeably. 2 i.e. Burrows, Simon , French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792-1814 (Woodbridge, 2000); Carpenter, Kirsty, Refugees of the French Revolution: The French émigrés in London, 1789- 1802 . (Basingstoke, 1999); Carpenter, Kirsty and Mansel, Philip (eds.), The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789-1814 (Basingstoke, 1999); Weiner, Margery, The French Exiles, 1789-1815 (London, 1960); the historiography concerning left-wing refugees is discussed below. 3 Mayer, A.J., The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London, 1981), p.109 5 precipitated British military intervention in Portugal and probably the defeat of Lord John Russell’s Whig government; the victims of the Revolutions of 1848 intrigued with British allies; and the Orléans became highly esteemed by British politicians. 4 Although not a homogeneous community, right-wing refugees were certainly conspicuous. Their actions and ambitions often threatened to create controversy both at Westminster and in the councils of Europe. The question of which refugees might be considered “right-wing” poses some difficulties. Even the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ were rarely used to describe British politicians, who were elected under myriad labels, until the 1830s. The terms right- and left-wing were not applied to British politics until the late 19th century. Yet they were used in relation to French politics, and would have been understood by informed Britons. 5 Charles X, Metternich, Dom Miguel and Don Carlos can easily be classified as reactionaries or absolutists – opponents of popular government, and thus firmly on the “right”. But although Montemolin claimed to be a liberal, appearances can be deceptive. Montemolin’s professions have been dismissed by historians, whereas his radical brother and successor Juan was rejected by the reactionary Carlist movement. 6 Similarly, although both the Orléans and their supporters retained liberal pretensions, historians have identified the Orléans and their followers as right-wing, and questioned the authenticity of their liberalism. 7 Roger Magraw and Pamela Pilbeam emphasise that the Orléans represented an oligarchic and elitist political system, and Theodore Zeldin suggests that Orleanism in practice and in theory were two very distinct things. Supported by a wealthy, propertied electorate, Louis Philippe’s “liberal” regime soon became somewhat authoritarian and elitist. It has also been described as a ‘failed right-wing experiment’, and even the ostensibly liberal Guizot 4 Bamford, Francis and the Duke of Wellington (eds.), The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot (2 Vols., London, 1950), 8 August 1830, ii p.377; Holt, Edgar, The Carlist Wars in Spain (London, 1967), ch.5- 6; Ridley, Jasper, Lord Palmerston (London, 1972), pp.431-33; Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.), Journals kept in France and Italy from 1848 to 1852 (2 Vols, London, 1871), i p.vi; Hansard , 30 March 1860, clvii, cc.1648-49 5 Watson, George, The English Ideology: Studies in the Language of Victorian Politics (London, 1973), ch.6; Hawkins, Angus, British Party Politics, 1852-1886 (Basingstoke, 1998), ch.2 6 Holt, Carlist Wars , p.223; Bullen, Roger, Palmerston, Guizot and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London, 1974), p.272 7 i.e. Du Pay de Clinchamps, Philippe, Le Royalisme (Paris, 1967); Rémond, René, The Right wing in France from 1815 to De Gaulle (Philadelphia, 1969) 6 dubbed his supporters in the National Assembly the ‘Conservative Party’.8 Those who fled France in early 1848 were right-wing by the standards of both their contemporaries and later historians. This distinction is complicated by the role which Orleanists played after 1848. Although they defended the “social order” against the French Second Republic, Orleanists later espoused parliamentary government during the authoritarian regime of Napoleon III, and thereby ‘rediscovered the virtues of liberalism’.