WI: July Ordinances Carry, Charles X reigns supreme

What if the absolutist July Ordinances of Charles X are successfully imposed upon the French people? (i.e. July Revolution is crushed decisively). How would France fair politically for the reminder of the 19th century? Might we still have a Bourbon in the throne in 2019?
 
1830 becomes this timeline's 1905. Charles X and the ultraconservatives continue onwards in the mistaken belief that it is possible to put genies back into bottles. Eventually tension boils over again, and this time it's quite possible guillotines are involved.


Seriously, the July Ordinances were an incredibly bad idea. Crushing the actual revolt is easy enough, but it won't do anything to resolve the shrinking support base of the regime or address France's underlying issues. What it will do is drastically increase the level of discontent.
At some point Charles or his successors will have to bring in a reform program or the regime will fall, and as has been noted since de Tocqueville, that is precisely the moment at which autocratic regimes are most in danger of triggering revolution and systemic political collapse.
 
1830 becomes this timeline's 1905. Charles X and the ultraconservatives continue onwards in the mistaken belief that it is possible to put genies back into bottles. Eventually tension boils over again, and this time it's quite possible guillotines are involved.


Seriously, the July Ordinances were an incredibly bad idea. Crushing the actual revolt is easy enough, but it won't do anything to resolve the shrinking support base of the regime or address France's underlying issues. What it will do is drastically increase the level of discontent.
At some point Charles or his successors will have to bring in a reform program or the regime will fall, and as has been noted since de Tocqueville, that is precisely the moment at which autocratic regimes are most in danger of triggering revolution and systemic political collapse.

This. And pretty quickly. He dies on schedule in 1836 succeeded by Louis XIX and there is a convulsive revolution on the order of 1848. Republic. No Orleanist Monarchy. It spreads into Italy and Central Europe and rocks the establishments there.
 
1830 becomes this timeline's 1905. Charles X and the ultraconservatives continue onwards in the mistaken belief that it is possible to put genies back into bottles. Eventually tension boils over again, and this time it's quite possible guillotines are involved.


Seriously, the July Ordinances were an incredibly bad idea. Crushing the actual revolt is easy enough, but it won't do anything to resolve the shrinking support base of the regime or address France's underlying issues. What it will do is drastically increase the level of discontent.
At some point Charles or his successors will have to bring in a reform program or the regime will fall, and as has been noted since de Tocqueville, that is precisely the moment at which autocratic regimes are most in danger of triggering revolution and systemic political collapse.

While I agree nominally, arent we being a tad presumptuous? I mean autocracy did return in the form of Napoleon III and it was allowed to thrive for a number of years (i.e. no popular revolution against it). The reason being the economy was moving in the right direction. So whose to say that Charles X and his immediate successor couldn't achieve something similar?
 
Napoleon III, and Louis-Philippe before him both took great pains not to appear as autocrats. They spent far more effort on winning the support of the public and having at least the appearance of a functioning constitution. Each regime also understood who its base of support was, and played to it.

The other difference, and this is important, is that each of those monarchies came to power with public support. Charles X was a foreign imposition, a man who owed his position to God- as manifested in the Holy Alliance backing his brother- and not to the people.

Charles X wasn't merely concentrating power in the King and his cronies, he was doing so with no support base. Even much of the elite was against him.

The Bourbons could have establishing a regime for the long term- Louis XVIII did a surprisingly good job of that, after all. But the July Ordinances were the response of a government who thought it could deal with structural problems with a crackdown, not a long-term strategy.
 
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