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Updated: July 18, 2025
The tenor of the notes agreed on seemed to Wellington more likely to inflame the Spanish government than to win concessions, and he lost no time in informing Villèle through Sir Charles Stuart, the British ambassador at Paris, of the course of negotiations.
M. de Montmorency, who wanted this post for his cousin the Duke de Laval, went so far as to say that he should resign if it were refused to him. The King and M. de Villèle kept their resolution; M. de Serre went to Naples, and M. de Montmorency remained in the Ministry, but not without discontent at the preponderance of a colleague who had treated him with so little complaisance.
"You wish then to impose yourself upon me as minister?" wrote the King once more. M. de Villele appeared moved, and passed to the sovereign this response: "The King well knows the contrary; but since he can write it, let him do with me what he will."
The report is that he is better. Read there for an hour and a half. Polignac offers, if it were desired, to sign a Convention upon the principles laid down in Aberdeen's despatch as to Algiers. He seems out of humour altogether with Leopold; Villele seems to have no great disposition to come in, although his friends have. He says the Opposition will in any case have 180 votes in the new Chamber.
First he longed to make his fortune, and risked his all in an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties as well as his capital; but he, an inexperienced youth, had to contend against duplicity, which won the day. Thus three years were lost in a vast enterprise, three years of struggling and courage. The Villele ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined.
The press restrictions were invented in the time of M. de Villele, who had a chance, if he had but known it, of destroying the power of journalism by allowing newspapers to multiply till no one took any notice of them; but he missed his opportunity, and a sort of privilege was created, as it were, by the almost insuperable difficulties put in the way of starting a new venture.
A coalition of the Extremists and the Left fought savagely against the Villele ministry, which was reproached particularly for its long duration. From 1827, Orleansism, which Charles X. did not even suspect, existed in a latent state, and sagacious observers could perceive the dangers of the near future. A review of the National Guard of Paris was a forerunner of them.
I presume that M. de Villèle fell into no mistake as to the pretended doubt in which M. de Châteaubriand endeavoured to envelop himself. I also incline to think that he himself, at that epoch, looked upon a war with Spain as almost inevitable.
The count, who was over forty years of age and married to a rich wife, had three children. His fortune, increased by various legacies, amounted, it was said, to sixty thousand francs a year. As deputy from Isere he passed his winters in Paris, where he had bought the hotel de Portenduere with the indemnities he obtained under the Villele law.
When the Ministry of M. de Villèle fell, and the Cabinet of M. de Martignac was installed, a new attempt at a Government of the Centre commenced, but with much less force, and inferior chances of success, than that which in 1816 and 1821, under the combined and separate directions of the Duke de Richelieu and M. Decazes, had defended France and the crown against the supremacy of the right and left-hand parties.
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