The French Restoration, 1814-1830: Part II
Despite its failure, writes D.W. Brogan, many French regimes have gone down with less dignity than that of the restored Bourbons.
If the restoration, above all the Second Restoration, was in its own opinion forced to rely on the noblesse, it was equally forced to rely on the Church. The priests were thought to be, and often were, the one part of the trustworthy elements of the population that was sure to be in touch with the peasantry.
It was in the Catholic regions that there had been most effective resistance to the usurper during the Hundred Days. It was, perhaps, these activities that had drained away enough of the Emperor’s troops in 1815 to destroy what chances he had of victory. It was natural, therefore, that the Second Restoration, even more than the first, should have seen in the Church the indispensable partner and ally in the re-education of France.
The alliance of “throne and altar” seemed to nearly everybody, on either side, desirable and inevitable. Church and Crown had gone down together. They should be restored together; each would lend and borrow strength from the other. But this simple theory ran athwart some awkward facts. By the Concordat of 1802, the Church had, in a sense, been restored, before the Crown.
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