Ultraroyalism in Toulouse Higgs, David Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Higgs, David. Ultraroyalism in Toulouse: From Its Origins to the Revolution of 1830. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.67840. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/67840 [ Access provided at 1 Oct 2021 18:46 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS David Higgs Ultraroyalism in Toulouse From Its Origins to the Revolution of 1830 Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3183-3 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3183-1 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3181-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3181-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3182-6 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3182-3 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. ULTRAROYALISM IN TOULOUSE THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE NINETIETH SERIES ( 1972) l. The Savage Ideal: Intolerance and Intellectual Leadership in the South, 1890--1914 BY BRUCE CLAYTON 2. Ultraroyalism in Toulouse: From Its Origins to the Revolution of 1830 BY DAVID HIGGS DAVID HIGGS UL TRAROYALISM IN TOULOUSE FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS BALTIMORE AND LONDON Copyright © 1973 by The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. No part of this hook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, xerography, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 The Johns Hopkins University Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-4021 ISBN 0-8018-1432-4 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Sketch-map of Restoration Toulouse xiv Introduction 1 I. Lous Seignous 11 II. The Revolution : Sans Religiou 24 III. From Bonaparte to the Bourbons 50 IV. Restoration Toulouse and the Ultras 71 V. Local Government and the Ultras 99 VI. Law, Order, and the Ultras in Toulouse, 1815-1830 123 VII. The Ulb·a Mind 138 VIII. The July Revolution and Legitimism in Toulouse 171 Appendices 180 Bibliography 191 Index 215 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOVEALL, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the late Professor Alfred Cobban for his teaching, understanding, and encouragement during and since my studies at University College, London. I want also to thank my fellow students and friends from Professor Cob­ ban's seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, who will recog­ nize in these pages many themes which were discussed both there and in less academic surroundings. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to the late Comte de Villele who very kindly allowed me to consult his private archives and whose family extended such a generous welcome to me. I also wish to thank the Marquis de Beaumont, Vicomte de Castelbajac, and M. Vivie de Regie, who gave me encouragement, hospitality, and valuable information on matters of family history. Professors Godechot and Sentou of the University of Toulouse were generous in suggesting avenues of investigation. My thanks are due to William J. Callahan, Olwen Hufton, Keith Baker, Harvey Mitchell, Martyn Lyons, Robert Forster, and Richard de Lavigne, who offered helpful criticisms of draft sections of the manuscript. I am very grateful to M. de Saint Blanquat and his staff at the municipal archives of Toulouse, and to all those who constantly gave me help at the departmental archives of the Haute Garonne and at the French National Archives, as well as the other archives and libraries I have used. I am grateful to the Canada Council, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, and the Summer Research Fund of the University of Toronto who made it possible for me to undertake travel to France for research. I wish to thank the Social Science Research Council of Canada for a grant that made possible the publication of this study. I wish also to thank Christine Purden and Linda Vlasak for their help in im­ proving the manuscript. D.H. ix ABBREVIATIONS A number of abbreviations are used in the text to indicate archives, libraries, and newspapers which are often cited. They are: AB Private archives of the Beaumont family ADHG Archives departementales de la Haute-Garonne AG Archives du Ministere de la guerre, Vincennes AMT Archives municipales de Ia ville de Toulouse AN Archives nationales de France AR Ami du Roi. Journal du Midi ( editor Augustin Manavit), 1815-19 AV Private archives of the Villele family BM British Museum BMT Bibliotheque municipale de Toulouse BN Bibliotheque nationale de France BUT Bibliotheque de l'universite de Toulouse EM Echo du Midi ( editor Augustin Manavit), 1821-28 JPLT Journal politique et litteraire de Toulouse et de la H aute-Garonne ( editor Jean-Franc;ois-Joseph Vieusseux), 1815-30 ULTRAROYALISM IN TOULOUSE § ti)..... r:J:J 0 ,.... C ~ ~ ., ~ 0 ~ i ~ 5 ; ::>....l 8.. 0 ~ .:3 0 ~ ~ INTRODUCTION RANCE HAS PRODUCED a rich and varied crop of "true" conserva­ Ftives who find it impossible to accept gradual, empirical re­ form. This fact has vexed most Anglo-American historians almost as much as the constant appeal to violence in the French revolutionary tradition. However perplexing the "jusqu'au bout" ideal is to many foreigners and even some Frenchmen, its origins and nature are an engrossing study. The social background of the politics of frustration in France is part of the explanation of the attitudes which the far Right derived from explanations of past events. These attitudes are not only to be found codified in the arguments of the theocratic reactionaries of whom the most famous are Maistre and Bonald, but in the social roots of that nostalgia which affects nations as well as individuals. The emigres, the ultra­ royalists, the Carlists and supporters of Henri V, the Action fran­ r;aise, and elements of the 0. A. S. display a widely differing set of concerns, but they all exemplify a persistent type in French political life, those whom a Gaullist deputy once described as the "eternels vaincus." These men, consistently defending untenable positions in a heroic, if obtuse, manner have fought an unsuccessful rear-guard action to defend a vanishing social order. Whether the explanation of their hostility is to be found in economic trends, social tensions, or institutional failures, their private jeremiads fit into a public framework. Their concerns are as important as those of more suc­ cessful groups in the explanation of historical change in France since the Revolution. Lost causes are an integral part of those 1 INTRODUCTION which have been won by their defeat, and deserve equally close examination. France, like other nations and societies, has produced a variety of theories of decline, corresponding to her changing political fortunes in Europe and the world.' Eighteenth-century pessimism was in­ significant by comparison with that induced by the course of the Revolution. It was not only Lammenais, de Musset, the returned emigres, and the rarified world of the intelligentsia who suffered from the mal du siecle following Waterloo. The Revolution repre­ sented another, at least temporary, victory of the state apparatus over local community and privilege, and it stimulated the longing, apparent in all parts of the country after the fall of Napoleon, for a return to older forms of society and government that were essen­ tially provincial and rural. The dockers of Marseille, the fishermen of Brittany, the peasants of the Auvergne, saw plainly enough that the Revolution had not solved the problems of poverty and eco­ nomic distress. Like the nobles, the ex-parlementarians, and the descendants of other local oligarchies, they were hostile to the ascendancy of Paris. On all levels of French society, there were those who selectively remembered the best of the Old Regime, dwelt on the most obvious failures of the Revolution's religious and welfare policies, and blamed facile utilitarians who did not under­ stand tradition for the destruction of the pre-1789 institutions. The locus classicus of this nostalgia in nineteenth-century France was the Paris salon of that undignified deputy, M. Piet. He pos­ sessed, happily, a room large enough to accommodate his ultra­ royalist colleagues at the Chambre Introuvable, who gathered there to plan parliamentary strategy. The lawyers, doctors, country gentlemen, and aristocrats, disapproving of the policy of Louis XVIII which they thought mistakenly conciliatory, formulated the basic themes that constantly reappeared in their critique of techno­ logical modernization and egalitarianism. The most able among this company was Joseph de Villele, a very short man with a pock-marked face and a strong southern accent, deputy and mayor of Toulouse. He was level-headed, of austere morality, pragmatic in his ideas, and intent more on balanc­ ing the budget and reducing taxation than on composing rhapsodies 1 K. W. Swart, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century France (The Hague, 1964); R. Remond, La droite en France, 3rd ed.