The
King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria
Laeken,
26th February 1848
My
dearest Victoria,—I am very unwell in consequence of the awful events at Paris.
How will this end? Poor Louise is in a state of despair which is pitiful to
behold. What will soon become of us God alone knows; great efforts will be made
to revolutionise [sic] this country; as there are poor and wicked people in all
countries it may succeed.
Against
France we, of course, have a right to claim protection from England and the
other Powers. I can write no more. God bless you. Ever your devoted Uncle,
Leopold
R.
********************
(No, not the cover of a Coldplay album: a scene from the 1848 revolution in France. Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This
letter comes at the beginning of an incredibly eventful year for all of Europe,
particularly on the Continent. In a wave similar to that of the recent
Arab Spring in the Middle East (a movement that actually draws its name from
the 1848 revolutions), political unrest in multiple European nations arose,
sparking widespread protests by the working classes over government
representation, working conditions, food prices, and absolute rule, among other
issues. Leopold’s letter is especially significant as the revolutions
began in France, the homeland of his wife Louise.
Louise’s
father, Louis-Philippe, had come to the throne as a result of the abdication of
Charles X in 1830. Charles had abdicated
amid growing resentment of the French people due to his growing interest in
returning France from a constitutional monarchy to an absolute one. Louis-Philippe had no interest in absolute
rule, but he also did not seem to understand that his policies tended to favor
the wealthiest French landowners almost exclusively. These landowners – about 1% of the population
– held all the voting rights and naturally voted according to their own
needs. Louis-Philippe seemed perfectly
pleased with this arrangement.
Naturally
this set up made most everyone else in France want to spit nails. The
considerably wealthy but land-poor merchants and factory owners were incensed
that their voices were not heard, despite providing sizeable tax income to the
state. This French upper middle class began
holding banquets that were more or less a cover for the political rallies that
had been outlawed after the French Revolution.
This group also became interested in recent suffrage successes in
Britain, which increased the number of eligible voters – not all of them
landowners – by about 40%.
But
the “banquets” couldn’t last for long without someone catching onto their true
meaning. By February 1848, the banquets
had also been declared illegal, which provided the spark for the riots that
took place that year. On February 22,
four days before Leopold’s letter was written, mobs began to pack the streets
of Paris. The French prime minister
resigned the following day, and on February 24, Louis-Philippe abdicated as
well. Louise-Philippe was obviously
panicked at the crowds forming near the palace; as the Capetian monarchy had
fallen to a bloody end just fifty years before, Louis-Philippe wisely assumed common
clothes as a disguise and hightailed it out of Paris. Louise’s mother, Maria Amalia, accompanied
him.
It
is doubtful that Leopold or Victoria knew the whereabouts of Louis-Philippe and
his family at the time this letter was written.
Leopold was naturally concerned for the safety of his in-laws, but
likely uneasy about the security of his throne.
Belgium was a brand new country that had been formed in protest. Who was to say that the unrest in nearby
France could not spread across the borders?
Leopold’s wife Louise
was a somewhat fragile person. She disliked Belgium and often cried when
writing letters home to her family. Her shy personality did not make her
particularly suited to life as a queen, although she was liked at court for her
kindness, sweet nature, and concern for the poor. Leopold did not enjoy
quite the love match in his second marriage that he had had with Charlotte, nor
did Louise seem to cure his sometime intense sexual passions. Louise seemed to dislike sex, more or less
withdrawing from it after the birth of her last child in 1840.
But Leopold did
have affection for her and was concerned by how the bad news from Paris
frightened Louise. The plights of her
parents, Leopold said, put his wife in “a state of despair which is pitiful to
behold.” What was more, Louise was still
in intense mourning for her paternal aunt Adelaide who had died in January (the
two had been very close), making her emotionally overwrought. Louise clung to her deep Catholic faith,
praying when she was not writing letters to determine the whereabouts of her
family.
On February 27,
a relieved Louise found out that her parents had made it to Britain. She wrote to Victoria in relief, asking her
to pass on letters and thanks for their survival. Louise wrote to her niece of what she felt
upon hearing of her parents’ safety:
In the hours of agony we have gone through I asked God only to spare
the lives, and I will ask still nothing else…What has happened is
unaccountable, incomprehensible, it appears to us like a fearful dream.
Meanwhile,
Victoria continued to field letters from other monarchs concerned about their
positions. Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia
sent Victoria a long letter urging her to join him in supporting the new France
as it had the monarchy – while simultaneously assuring their own people that
they knew how to rule appropriately, of course.
(Friedrich Wilhelm and Prussia had their own problems during the 1848
revolution.) Victoria also continued to
receive and send notes to her advisors with more information on the situation
in France as it became available.
But Louise grew
nearly inconsolable in the meantime, as she was unable to find out exactly
where her parents had landed. Indeed
Victoria herself didn’t seem to know as of March 1, although she believed they
were in Britain. Victoria had received
word that her cousin Victoire (married to one of Louis-Philippe’s sons) had
made it to Jersey, and she assured Louise and Leopold that she was doing
everything she could to find Louis-Philippe and Maria Amalia. On March 3, Viscount Palmerston (then
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) confirmed that the former French King
and Queen had arrived in Britain that morning.
They had spent the preceding week and a half slowly making their way to
the coastal city of Le Havre, hiding along the way.
Although
British-French relations had had their ebbs and flows over the years, the British
(with the help of the Belgians) welcomed their French guests with open
arms. Leopold arranged for Maria Amalia
and Louis-Philippe to occupy Claremont, his home in Britain. Victoria and her family visited
Louis-Philippe and Maria Amalia periodically.
The couple was fairly content for the most part, and both Louis-Philippe
and Maria Amalia spent the rest of their lives at Claremont, dying in 1850 and
1866 respectively.
Louise, driven
to exhaustion over her parents’ situation, fell into ill health after the fall
of the Orleanist monarchy. The distance
between Louise and her husband grew greater, and Leopold began more or less
openly living with his chief mistress during this time. Louise developed tuberculosis in 1849, and
her father’s death the following year seemed to sap her spirits and will to
live. Louise died on October 11, 1850,
at the age of 38.
Of all of the
countries affected by the 1848 revolutions, France was one of most
affected. Some victories were claimed by
the lower classes in Austria-Hungary, and constitutional monarchy began in
Denmark. Germany also saw some temporary
changes to its monarchy, and protests in Italy drove out the Bourbon monarchy
for a short time. Britain saw some
small, localized riots that did not amount to a larger movement. Britain instead became the oasis for one of
its former rivals, moving fully into the Industrial Age, increasing its power
as a future empire. And at its head:
Victoria.