Term Paper on "What Happened in France in 1816"

Term Paper 17 pages (4744 words) Sources: 17 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

French Colonialism in Western Africa

The so-called Bourbon restoration, which lasted from roughly 1814 to 1830, saw the end of Napoleon's reign as well as the beginning of the end for the empire he established, because although the true end of France's colonial aspirations would not come until the twentieth century, Napoleon's reign was the high-water mark for France as a global imperial power. Thus, the Bourbon restoration, while representing the return of the monarchy, was also a period of distinct imperial decline wherein French power, both military and cultural, evaporated. When looking at the first few years of the Bourbon restoration, one can see the beginnings of this almost inevitable decline even as the restored monarchy attempted to portray itself with the same pomp and glory that had marked Napoleon's imperial reign and the old monarchy which had preceded him.

The Bourbon restoration began with an inauspicious start, when, "after enduring but little over ten months the restored Monarchy had collapsed like a pack of cards," as Napoleon returned from exile and Louis XVIII was forced to flee (Hall 70). After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the monarchy regained power seemingly as a last resort, the only possible means by which France could keep some form of sovereignty in the face of dedicated and allied opposition. The government that emerged from this defeat was "an attempt to graft upon Absolute Monarchy, which had been revived by Napoleon, a Parliamentary and Constitutional form of government similar to that of England," and, much like an organism rejecting the grafting of an alien organ, this attempt resulted in the destruction of both the absolute monarchy and the newly established Parliamentary organ via the revolution of 1830 (Ormanthwaite 110).

The reign of Louis and his successors was so clearly disastrous for the country that by 1872, one author remarked that "the history of the first Bourbon Restoration and of the circumstances of its failure is so well-known, and so much within the personal recollection of men still existing, that it seems almost a tiresome repetition of what newspaper articles and contemporary reviews have already taught us, to recapitulate them" (Ormanthwaite 110). The failure of the Bourbon regime was due to a combination of indifference and incompetence, combined with a dedication to old grudges born out of the Napoleonic wars, grudges that would ultimately serve to undermine Louis XVIII authority and destabilize the country.

However, well before the Bourbon monarchy was again "overthrown by a popular insurrection, and vanquished in a street fight," an event occurred which seemed to serve as an omen for the ruin to come and laid bare the impotency of the monarchy and its supporters just as it was seeking to reestablish its legitimacy. In the summer of 1816, just a year after Napoleon's decisive defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and the "second chance" for the recently reascended Bourbon monarchy, the "low moment in French history" that was the Bourbon restoration was marred by the crash of a French naval frigate, the Medusa, carrying the newly-appointed governor of Senegal (Athanassoglou-Kallmyer 811).

"France had only just reacquired its West African territories in the treaty that finally ended the Napoleonic Wars," and so the rapid installation of a new governor was paramount in demonstrating the new regime's control over its empire (Brandt 171). Thus, while the crash itself would have been embarrassing enough, the decisions of the captain, the governor, and the officers of the ship catapulted the Medusa into the public eye and stained the monarchy forever by demonstrating in gory detail the incompetence and indifference of the Bourbon regime just as it was attempting to demonstrate its legitimacy by reclaiming its former colonies. More specifically, the grounding of the Medusa sixty miles off the coast of western Africa would not have proved such a public humiliation and repudiation of Bourbon rule had it not been captained by a Royalist appointee with limited skill, and had that captain not made the decision to abandon a raft carrying 147 people in order to ensure the safety of the new governor and himself.

Over the course of thirteen days, the passengers on the raft died either by drowning, starvation, suicide, or murder, and the few remaining survivors brought with them stunning accounts of the event. However, even the atrocities committed by and upon the passengers on the raft were not enough to rattle the monarchy. It would not be until two years later, when the published account of two of the survivors inspired a young painter to immortalize the events, would the full impact of the raft of the Medusa be felt. The painter, Theodore Gericault, imbued his image with political imagery, and the Raft of the Medusa may be interpreted as a direct critique of the bungling, haphazard governance of the Bourbon regime, a critique that predicts the crumbling of imperial power over the course of the Bourbon restoration and the "bloody class war" that would ultimately result in a second revolution (Ledbury 608). Thus, while Gericault's painting was ostensibly focused on atrocities recently passed, it pointed towards France's the future as well, and the critique it proposes serves as a kind of looking glass through which one can interpret the Bourbon restoration as a whole.

Henry Savigny, Alexander Correard, and the Raft of the Medusa

Before addressing the visual and metaphorical content of Gericault's the Raft of the Medusa in detail, it will be useful to briefly discuss the actual raft itself and the conditions on it, as reported by Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard, two of the fifteen survivors who eventually published an account of their experience. As reported by Savigny and Correard, responsibility for the grounding of the Medusa lies with her captain, Hugues Deroys de Chaumareys, and to a lesser extent, the newly-appointed governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien Schmaltz, who was determined to arrive at his destination as soon as possible. As will be seen, these two men represented on a micro-scale the indifference, incompetence, and cronyism that would come to characterize the Bourbon regime and ultimately lead to the final downfall of the monarchy in 1830.

For all intents and purposes, Chaumareys should not have been captaining the Medusa at all; "determined to exclude naval officers who had served under Napoleon, [French Minister of the Marine] Dubouchage made his selection on the basis of de Chaumareys' aristocratic pedigree and pro-Bourbon sympathies, and not on his merits as a sea captain," which were likely negligible considering that "at the time the Medusa set sail in June 1816, de Chaumareys had not served on board a French ship for twenty years" (Riding 38). De Chaumareys proceeded to prove "so incompetent that instead of following the advice of the officers under him, many of them republicans who had fought for France during the wars, he relied on that of a passenger who claimed to know the treacherous, badly mapped West African coastline well," but who proceeded to lead "the ship straight onto the Arguin Bank, a sandbar that extends far into the Atlantic" (Brandt 132). After failing to free the ship from the bank, a decision was made to fashion a raft out of spare parts and tow it to shore behind the Medusa's five smaller boats, but the latter half of the plan was not to be.

Later, Governor Schmaltz would attempt to explain the abandonment of the raft by saying that:

Some men were on the front of the raft, at the place where the towrope was fixed, which they pulled so as to draw the boat nearer to them; they had already pulled several fathoms of it to them, but a wave coming, gave a violent shock; these men were obliged to let go: the boats proceeded more rapidly, till the rope was stretched; at the moment when the boats effected this tension the effort was such, that the rope broke. (Savigny & Correard 175-176).

In reality, however, accounts from others in the boats revealed "that all the boats were coming to resume their post, when a cry of 'we forsake them' was heard," and the two rope was let go as each individual boat fell into disarray (Savigny & Correard 176). The raft upon which the 147 people were abandoned was made up of "the top-masts of the frigate, yards, fishes, boom, etc. […] joined together by very strong ropes," and measured "at least twenty metres in length, and above seven in breadth" (Savigny & Correard 173). The residents of the raft were for the most part submerged in "at least a metre" of water, and they had barely any supplies, as the majority of provisions had been thrown overboard in order to keep the raft afloat, so that they "saved only the wine and the water" (Savigny & Correard 174).

By the end of the first night, the raft had lost twenty people, as "ten or twelve unhappy wretches, having their lower extremities entangled in the openings between the pieces of the raft,… READ MORE

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