HISTORY

followed the British example and chose his ministers from the party or grouping that could command a majority in the Chamber. He sought reconciliation within France, persuading the British Government to allow Napoleon’s remains to be brought back from St Helena to be entombed in the Invalides, a mission carried out by one of his sons. Until its last days the regime seemed well-established, all the more so because the succession was secure. And yet in February 1848 it crumbled within a few days. There were, as always, long-term and immediate reasons for its failure. It had never enjoyed a sufficiently broad base of support. On the Right it was resented by the displaced Legitimists. On the Left it could not satisfy the republicans, who felt cheated by the outcome of the July Revolution. Then the franchise was too restricted, excluding many who in other circumstances would have been natural supporters of order; and Louis-Philippe, ever mindful of how the liberals of 1789 had lost control of their Revolution and been submerged by the popular tide, hesitated to extend it. He set his face against further reform until it was too late. Consequently when the republican movement gathered strength and demonstrations in Paris turned into armed conflict, he found he could not rely on the National Guard in the capital, for even many members of that bourgeois force were denied the vote and had therefore no stake in the regime. The Army was reliable, but the King could not bring himself to order it to act vigorously to disperse the mob. Perhaps he was too humane; perhaps his nerve failed – he was already seventy-eight. When, a few months after his abdication, the new republican government suppressed a mass rising of Paris workers, Louis-Philippe, again an exile in England, remarked sardonically: ‘Republics are lucky; they can shoot people.’ The Third Republic would do so, even more ruthlessly when it crushed the Communards in 1871. Munro Price speculates whether Adelaide’s death in 1847 contributed to the monarchy’s fall the next year. More sympathetic to reform than the brother she adored, she might have persuaded him to nip unrest in the bud by offering a further measure of parliamentary reform before it was too late. He admits, however, that this must be an open question. The July Monarchy ended then as a failure. Yet it provided a term of necessary stability, and in the long run it may even seem to have won, for the Fifth Republic which de Gaulle created resembles the July Monarchy more than any of the regimes in between. It too combines a strong executive controlled by a President whose powers are very similar to those enjoyed by Louis-Philippe; the President may indeed be called a directly elected constitutional monarch. Which, if good for France, is not enough for my friends in the Bar des Templiers who hold hard to the Legitimist cause, hopeless though it is. To order this book at £16, see LR Bookshop on page 37

DOMINICSANDBROOK DARK CONTINENT

BARBARISMANDCIVILISATION: A HISTORY OFEUROPEINOURTIME

★

By Bernard Wasserstein (Oxford University Press 901pp £25)

THETHESIS OFBernard Wasserstein’s huge new history of modern Europe is all there in the title. Two themes underlie this grandest of narratives: on the one hand, the astonishing advance of European science, technology and culture, accompanied by a great boom in living standards, life expectations and imaginative horizons; on the other, the appalling depths of sadism and depravity to which Europeans sank in history’s bloodiest century. It is an arresting argument, but not a particularly new one. Nine years ago, Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent offered what, at the time, was the most radical rereading of European history for a generation, emphasising the desperate fragility of democracy and civility since the dawn of the century. For Mazower – writing in the shadow of the war in Bosnia – ethnic hatred and genocide were not anomalies; they were embedded in

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR WRITERS

Grants and Pensions are available to published authors of several works who are in financial difficulties due to personal or professional setbacks. Applications are considered in confidence by the General Committee every month.

For further details please contact: Eileen Gunn General Secretary The Royal Literary Fund 3 Johnson’s Court, London EC4A 3EA

Tel 0207 353 7159

Email: egunnrlf@globalnet.co.uk www.rlf.org.uk

Registered Charity no 219952

15

LITERARY REVIEW August 2007