52. Conclusion
CONCLUSION. (1815-1880)
Napoleon's death happened only sixty years ago, within the memory of our grandparents, and what has <occured>(happened) since in France is so near our own times, that I think there is no need to say more than a few words about it. Many of the people now alive remember it all, and there have as yet been scarcely any books written about it, so I will make my account of it very short, and I hope all my readers will live to read longer and better accounts of it hereafter.
When Napoleon was sent away to St. Helena, Louis XVIII. was(, as I have said before,) brought back into Paris by the Allies, and set up there as king as he had been before. He was called Louis XVIII. ; not Louis XVII., because it was considered by the Royalists that Louis XVI. had gone on being king to the end of his life, and that his little son Louis became king at his death, just as would have happened if Louis had died a natural death. Little Louis was called Louis XVII. by them while he lived, and spoken of by that name after he was dead, so that the next king had to be called Louis XVIII. He had learned that it was necessary to yield in some degree to the wishes of the people. He gave them a charter or agreement to govern in a particular way, by which he promised them many of the rights for which they had asked at the beginning of the Revolution, the right of believing what they liked, of publishing what books they liked, and others of the same kind. After this, he ruled quietly for nine years, when he died, and was buried with all the ceremonies that were usual in old times at the funerals of the kings of France.
His brother succeeded him, and was called Charles X. This is the third instance of three brothers succeeding one another on the throne in French history, and each time there have been no more of the same family after them. It happened when the family of Capet ended with the three sons of Philip le Bel, in the fourteenth century; when the Valois ended with the three sons of Henry II., in the sixteenth; and now again with the Bourbons the grandsons of Louis XV., in the nineteenth. Charles did not succeed so well as Louis had done. He made himself disliked by being entirely under the control of the priests, and doing whatever they wished.
The king and his ministers quarrelled with the Chambers who had been appointed to help him govern. After he had reigned for six years the quarrel came to a point. Charles published five decrees or acts, taking away some of the rights that had been promised to his subjects by the charter. At this the people were so angry that they rose up in a rebellion, and made barricades in the street as they used to do in old times. The king would not yield to them, because, as he said, "yielding had brought his brother to the scaffold," but at last he agreed to change his ministers, and choose some who would be pleasing to the people. But he found that this was not enough to satisfy his subjects, he gave up the crown. He wished his grandson to succeed him, and to be called Henry V., but the people would not hear of this, and offered the crown to his cousin, the Duke of Orleans. Then Charles X. left France altogether. He went to England and lived there for some time as a private gentleman, and afterwards went to Austria, where he died. His grandson, the Count of Chambord, is alive now, and it has been often proposed that he should be made King of France, but he has refused the crown, and there is no prospect of the French being governed again by any of Louis XV. 's descendants. The cousin of Charles X., who had been Duke of Orleans, was known as king by the name of Louis-Philippe. He was called king not of France but of the French, to show that ho had been chosen by the French people, and was not king either because of his birth, or from having taken the crown by force, which had been till then the only ways by which a man could become King of France. He reigned for eighteen years.
There were some troubles during his reign, both in and out of France. In France there were risings up against the government, and one year a terrible illness, called cholera, of which more than a million people died. Out of France there were wars in different countries in which the French king was concerned. There were two or three attempts made to murder Louis-Philippe, but he was never hurt; and, on the whole, the people seemed satisfied with his rule.
In his reign the bones of Napoleon were brought from St. Helena to Paris. and solemnly buried in a fine building, called the Hôtel des Invalides, on the shores of the Seine. Just at the same time a nephew of Napoleon, the son of his brother Louis and his step-daughter Hortense, whose name was Louis Napoleon, came secretly to France, and tried to stir up the army to revolt against the Government. He was taken prisoner, and shut up in a castle, from which he escaped a few years afterwards in the dress of a working man. It was not long before he was able to go back to France in triumph.
The people grew discontented with the king. They held meetings, and set up barricades in the streets. The king then gave up the crown, as Charles X. had done before him, and left Paris with the queen and his children. The mob had taken away the royal carriages, and they had to drive out of Paris in cabs.
After this it was resolved that there should be a republic, as there had been after the great Revolution, with a president for chief, and two councils, called the Senate and the Assembly, to help him govern. All over France deputies were chosen to make up the Assembly. Louis Napoleon was one of them. A little later he was chosen President of the Republic for four years, and before the end of that time he had managed to prepare everything for having himself declared Emperor, as his uncle had been before him.
The army was on his side, and no one made much resistance when Napoleon declared that the Assembly was at an end, arrested his principal enemies, and filled Paris with troops. He now governed by himself for about a year, and then the crown for which he so much wished was offered to him by the people, and he was crowned Emperor at the Palace of St. Cloud, and took the name of Napoleon III. Napoleon II. was the son of Napoleon I., who died when he was about nineteen, and had always lived with his mother in Germany, and had never really governed any one.
Napoleon III. was emperor for eighteen years. He (was a great friend of our Queen Victoria, and) helped the English in the Crimean War against Russia in the year 1855; but he was not successful in his different undertakings, and he soon <ceased to be>(left off being) popular in France. In the year 1870 he went to war with Germany, thinking he was certain of success, and wanting to turn away his subjects' attention from his government in France; but he found his enemies stronger than he expected. His armies were driven back, the Germans marched into France without his being able to stop them, and at last a battle was fought at Sedan, after which Napoleon gave up himself and his army as prisoners to the King of Prussia.
The French, who had long been tired of the Emperor, now turned against him. He was declared to be deposed from the throne, and France for the third time became a republic. Napoleon went away to England with his wife and son, and lived there for about two years, when he died. His only son <went> with the English army <to>(in) Africa, where he was killed <by zulu>(fighting) when he was twenty-three years old. Meanwhile the Germans took several towns in France, defeated all the French armies, besieged Paris for four months and took it, made a peace called the Peace of Frankfort, by which the province of Alsace and part of Lorraine were given up to them, and went back again to Germany, all in less than a year from the time when the war began. France has ever since been a republic, with one president after another (to be) at the head of affairs. (Whether this form of government will last, or some other change be made in the course of time, it is impossible to say.)
I have now given you some account of the history of France from the time of Julius Cæsar to that at which I write, and I hope that all my readers will feel inclined to learn more about it when they grow older. For, if people care at all for history — that is, for knowing what has been happening to the people who lived in the world before they were born — they ought to care about the history of a nation (with which their own country has had so much to do, and) which has been concerned with so many of the important events happening in all the other countries of Europe.
The French (are our nearest neighbours on the Continent, and) are(, besides,) one of the greatest and most important nations in the world. Their history is full of interesting and amusing events, of which I have been obliged to leave the greater part untold, because there was not space in this book to hold them.
And now, being come to the end of all I had to say, I will wish all my readers who have managed to come so far as the journey's end with me a friendly Farewell.