Then after the Duchesse landed in France to try and raise an uprising, issuing manifestos calling herself Regent of France, Charles angerly responded that she was not the Regent.
Charles X has requested permission of the Government to return to his old asylum at Holyrood, and, this being immediately granted, on October 15, 1830, he sailed for Scotland, accompanied by the Dauphin and Dauphine and the Duc de Bordeaux, but Mademoiselle, under the charge of Madame de Gontaut, made the journey by land, as did the Duchesse de Berry, who spent some time in London before proceeding to the North.
In November, Madame rejoined her relatives at Holyrood. The sombre and melancholy hospitality of the old palace of the Scottish Kings, and the dull and monotonous existence which Charles X lived there, were, as we may suppose, not at all to the taste of a young woman so full of life and energy as the Duchesse de Berry, and she was profoundly bored. The northern winter, too, naturally proved extremely trying to one born under the blue sky of Naples, and she suffered much from rheumatism; she writes, under date January 9, 1831, to her old friend the Comtesse de Meffray: «The climate here is not cold, but windy. For a week I have not been able to go out; it is very tedious».
For the astute Talleyrand was not deceived in his belief that the princess was meditating some bold project against the new dynasty.
The Revolution of July had made of this young woman,hitherto so indifferent to politics, an intriguer, a conspirator, of the most ardent kind, and had aroused in her all the passion, the courage, and the determination which she had inherited from her grandmother, Maria Carolina.
If Charles X and the Dauphin regarded the catastrophe which had overtaken them as a decree of Providence, and were indisposed to take any active steps to recover the Crown which they had permitted to slip so easily from them, she absolutely refused to allow the rights of her son to be sacrificed. How could any woman who possessed a spark of maternal pride calmly resign herself to the idea that in three days the brilliant future of her child had been permanently changed; that, in place of sitting upon the throne of his ancestors and making for himself an honourable place in history, he must spend the rest of his life as a "pretender" - one of those unfortunate princes whose claims to kingly rank are a source of embarrassment and irritation to the sovereigns who extend to them a grudging hospitality, and of contemptuous amusement to the people over whom they aspire to rule?
«For her and for many of her partisans,» writes Thureau Dangin, «it was less a question of executing a political design carefully matured than of transporting into the midst of the bourgeois France of 1830 a chivalrous adventure, something resembling the action of one of Walter Scott's tales, which at this time exercised a supreme influence over all romantic minds».
Charles X, who believed that where an old man of his experience had failed, a young woman with no knowledge of politics or the difficulties of government could not possibly succeed, was very far from approving of the bellicose projects of his daughter-in-law, and endeavoured to persuade her to renounce them, pointing out that her chance of success was extremely remote, and that she would be incurring the gravest risks to very little purpose. But to Madame the prospect of danger in France was infinitely preferable to that of ennui at Holyrood, and the more he sought to discourage her, the more resolute did she become.
Finally, the old King ended by giving a kind of half-consent. He could, indeed, do nothing else, for, since he and the Dauphin had renounced their rights in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux,
it was to the mother of the little prince that the majority of Royalists looked for direction; and to refuse altogether to countenance the Duchesse de Berry's plans would have exposed him to the most bitter recriminations from the more ardent section of the party, already irritated by what it considered his pusillanimous withdrawal from France, when he might have fallen back on la Vendee, rallied his adherents around him, and prolonged the struggle indefinitely.
Even in his little court at Holyrood, the party which favoured energetic action — that is to say the party of Madame — was much more numerous than his own, and, if his pessimistic views were shared by the Dauphin and Dauphine and his now favourite counsellor, the Duc de Blacas, the princess numbered among her supporters the Marshal de Bourmont - the conqueror of Algiers -, three other ex-Ministers in the Baron d'Haussez, the Comte de Montbel, and the Baron Capelle; the Duc Armand de Polignac, Damas, Mesnard, and Brissac.
And so he made a virtue of necessity, and on January 27, 1831 [Charles X]
conferred conditionally on the princess the title of Regent, in the event of her re-entering France, and signed an order to the following effect :
«M. . . . chief of civil authority in the province of . . . will arrange with the principal leaders to draw up and publish a proclamation in favour of Henri V., in which it will be announced that Madame, Duchesse de Berry, will be Regent of the Kingdom during the minority of the King, her son, and that she will assume the title on her entry into France, for such is our will».
Charles X, however, distrusting the adventurous character of the princess, firmly refused to allow either the Duc de Bordeaux or Madamoiselle to accompany their mother, and joined to her as counsellor the Duc de Blacas, with authority to oppose any enterprise which might seem to him too hazardous.
(Hugh Noel Williams,
A princess of adventure, Marie Caroline, duchess de Berry)
(Louis Blanc,
The history of ten years, 1830-1840; or, France under Louis Philippe)
The arrest and imprisonment of the Duchess of Berry, are for the King and the new government, an awkward problem. Louis-Philippe would like to expel the Duchess of the France, citing the recent law of 10 April 1832 condemning to perpetual banishment of all members of the family of Charles X. But the Duchess is implicated conspiracy and armed rebellion, and it seems difficult to to escape justice. At the same time, in case of trial, all possible outcomes also appear bad, «l’acquittement ferait du roi un usurpateur, la condamnation, un bourreau, et la grâce, un lâche!» («the acquittal would make the king a usurper, condemnation, an executioner, and grace, a coward!», Guy Antonetti,
Louis-Philippe).
It spreads, in January 1833, the rumor that the Duchesse de Berry is pregnant. February 29, Le Moniteur publishes a statement of the princess, dated 22, in which the Duchess claims to have secretly married during his stay in Italy. Legitimists, also supported by some Republicans, have castigate the government inelegance of the process, but the damage is done: the princess now appears as an «aventurière de bonne maison» (Rodolphe Apponyi) [in 1815, the Duke of Wellington had ruled out the possibility of accession to the Duke of Orleans to the throne saying that if he had wanted to do this, he would have been «un usurpateur de bonne maison»] and the episode does not fail to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the "miracle child" itself, the Duc de Bordeaux.
Why hide the marriage?
What the Regent of France could have done in the interest of her child, the Countess Lucchesi-Palli had not right to try.
When King Henri V would have reached the age of majority (the Kings of France reached the age of majority to 13 years, and the Duc de Bordeaux had already 10), the Duchess of Berry would have revealed the secret marriage and would withdraw from public life (see Maria Cristina, Queen of Spain and regent for Isabel II).
The problem of the regency for the Duchess of Berry is in this thing, as outlined by Appony:
«Comment Madame, mariée en Italie, pourrait-elle être régente de France, alors que, par son mariage, elle-même n’est plus française?»,
how the Duchesse de Berry, secretly married in Italy, could be «Regent of France», since, because of his marriage, in itself is not more French?
In fact, by law, no foreigner could be regent of the kingdom.