For @lesmisletters readers not aware: the thing Hugo’s talking about in the “Few Pages of History” section is the Revolution of 1830, a revolution that happened two years before the June Rebellion of 1832 (the one that’s the focus of Les Mis.)
Basically what happened in 1830 was this:
— Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo in 1815 and kings were restored to the throne: the ancient pre revolution monarchy, the house of the Bourbons.
The first restored king was Louis XVIII, who was ultimately more willing to make concessions to the gains of the revolution: he wasn’t trying to bring back the “pre revolution” monarchy, he was willing to accept the monarchy had to make compromises to survive.
Then Louis XVIII died, and Charles X took the throne.
Charles X was a lot more Ultraroyalist, a lot less willing to compromise. He took a lot of measures to try to claw back the “concessions” the monarchy had been forced to grant to the French Revolution. It was like he was trying to bring back pre-revolution absolute monarchy.
This is what Hugo is talking about here, when he’s talking about why the Bourbons got kicked off the throne:
One morning [the monarchy] drew itself up before the face of France, and, elevating its voice, it contested the collective title and the individual right of the nation to sovereignty, of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made him a citizen.
This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July.
The people of France were not happy about this. Following the monarchy’s nonsense, the Revolution of July happened, and basically the House of Bourbon got kicked out of power.
But instead of being replaced with a Democratic republic…. a series of Political Shenanigans happened and they instead got replaced by another king, Louis Philippe d’Orleans.
Louis Philippe was less conservative and more progressive, far more willing to compromise with leftists. but only like, by the standards of kings. There’s only so far you can go while still being a Monarch XD.
Anyway, this is the political context that Les Amis exist in— trying to boot Louis Philippe and get a democratic republic For Real This Time!
And this section is about Hugo explaining his own thoughts on these revolutions and on the failures of constitutional monarchies.
