Stirrings of Revolt 593

reactionary brother Nicholas. The Northern Union nonetheless convinced
the Saint Petersburg garrison to support the succession of Constantine.
Troops occupied a central square in the capital, shouting the name of their
favorite, until Nicholas ordered troops loyal to him to fire. A hastily planned
insurrection by the Southern Union was also put down. The leaders of the
Decembrists, as they came to be known, were executed.
Hard-working and willful, Nicholas I (ruled 1825-1855) believed that his
power to govern came directly from God. Nicholas tightened the grip of the
police on education in an attempt to exclude Western ideas from Russia. In
1833, the minister of education proclaimed the doctrine of ‘‘Official Nation­
ality”: autocracy, orthodoxy, and official [Russian] nationality were the inter­
twined principles of the state. The new tsar did not approve of serfdom
because it was inefficient, but he feared that its abolition could lead to peas­
ant insurrection. Nicholas did, however, order the codification of Russian
laws in the first decade of his reign and encouraged reforms improving the
conditions of state serfs. The arrival of liberal ideas from the West encour­
aged debate and calls for reform within the Russian intelligentsia, encourag­
ing a group of reform-minded men within the imperial bureaucracy.

France: The Bourbon Restoration and the Revolution of 1830

In a contemporary French lampoon of the return of the Bourbons to the

throne, a majestic eagle—the symbol of Napoleon—sweeps out of the Tui­

leries Palace in Paris as a somewhat plump, unsightly duck waddles in, fol­

lowed by its ungainly brood. The contrast between the image of Napoleon’s

bold achievements and the stodgy and pious Restoration was sharp indeed.

The Bourbons returned “in the baggage of the allies,” as it was said.

Upon the return of the Bourbons to power in May 1814, Louis XVIII pro­

mulgated a Charter that, in effect, made France a constitutional monarchy.

The Charter recognized equality before the law and accepted the Napoleonic

Civil Code. It established an assembly consisting of a Chamber of Deputies

and a Chamber of Peers. The king would name members (whose appointment

would be for life and hereditary) of the Chamber of Peers, as well as minis­

ters, who would be responsible only to him. The Chamber of Deputies would

be elected in a complicated two-stage process, based on an extremely narrow

electoral franchise.

The restored Bourbon monarchy maintained the centralized state bureau­

cracy; recognized all Napoleonic titles, decorations, and even pensions; and

promised that property purchased during the Revolution as “national” would

remain in the hands of the new owners. Moreover, the Charter offered free­

dom of the press. The government could levy no taxes without the consent of

the Assembly.

The Catholic Church would still be subject to Napoleon’s Concordat

(see Chapter 13), but was returned to its privileged position, and Catholi­

cism again became the official state religion, although the Napoleonic