UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The return of the loving father: masculinity, legitimacy and the French and Dutch Restoration monarchies (1813-1815)

Historians of gender often see the construction of hegemonic images of masculinity as the result of long-term cultural processes. In this article we investigate the influence of short-term political events on the shaping of dominant political masculinities by comparing the representations of the early French and Dutch Restoration monarchies. The events of the political transition of 1813-1815 greatly influenced the competition of different models of masculinity existing in the early nineteenth century. In both countries the newly established monarchs aimed to legitimate their insecure rule by presenting themselves as ‘loving fathers’ returning to their despairing children after the dark years of exile. The Dutch monarchy differed from the French case with regards to the role of women in the monarchical representation and the duality of the representation of William I as father and hero. Unlike Louis XVIII, William could present his fatherly rule as a return to the national tradition of domesticity ( huiselijkheid ).

masculinity. 5 The remaining crucial question is how, when and why these kinds of historical transformations occur. 6 One possible method to shed new light on this problem is to study periods after political crises, in the narrow sense of revolutions, wars and civil wars. These periods are generally dominated by attempts to create a new stability and consensus. 7 The legitimacy of the new regime is still far from selfevident, but forms the object of complicated political, symbolic and cultural negotiations. At the beginning of the Restoration period in the Netherlands and in France contrasting concepts of masculinity came to play a crucial role in the ongoing struggle for the reconstruction of political legitimacy. The dominant heroic masculinity of the Jacobin and Napoleonic period in France and of the time of the patriots in the Netherlands was losing ground while other ideals of masculinity, apparently better suited to the huge and urgent political task of reconciliation, became more influential. 8 How exactly did these ideals become part of the political conflicts and negotiations? How were the competing models of masculinity used to create and support, or to attack and undermine the equally competing concepts of political legitimacy? Studying these problems can also shed light on the diversity of the political meanings of modern masculinity more generally. 9 As is well known, modern politics began in the period around 1800, parallel to the emergence of the so-called two-sex-model in Europe. 10 This model emphasised the fundamental and at the same time natural difference between the two sexes, resulting in the stereotypes of complementary gender characteristics: men are strong, brave, active and rational beings acting in the public sphere; women are weak, passive, particularly sensitive beings acting in the private sphere. It has become clear however, that this analysis cannot be understood as a one-toone description of the dominating gender norms at a given historical moment.
In the Netherlands and France during the second half of the eighteenth century, a negative discourse on the degeneration of society at large was closely linked to effeminacy being understood as the lack of control of exaggerated passions. 11 While in France the solution to this problem was identified in the new ideal of the homme nouveau that centred around the force and selfassurance of the new political subject of the revolution, simultaneously the culture of sensibility reached its apex: many men burst into tears in public and sensibility was seen as an essential characteristic and virtue of men (as well as women) in order to be able to recognise and enforce the value of equality. 12 Conversely, the revolutionaries regarded the aristocrates, the opposite and enemy of the homme nouveau, as the incarnation of an artificial and hypocrite emotionality, softness and cowardice. Moreover, in the Netherlands a sharp discursive division between a masculine public and a feminine private sphere did not really occur. Since 1760 masculinity was associated above all with domesticity, even if this domesticity did not exclude an active public role. 13 This ambivalent gendering of certain character traits since the late eighteenth century informed many of the ways in which ideas of masculinity  low countries histories of masculinity were employed for political purposes after 1813. Although the new gender ideology of contrasting natures and separate spheres remained in place during the Restoration, at least in the sense that it legitimised the exclusion of women from the political sphere, this did not mean that it was in any way clear what kind of men the new ruling men of the Restoration should be. It was this question that put its mark on the political discourse of the two postrevolutionary countries struggling to find a common and stable basis for their polities. In this article we will analyse the models of masculinity that can be found in the representations of the monarchies of Louis XVIII (r. 1814XVIII (r. -1824 and William I (r. 1813-1840). 14 The monarchy was the central institution both in the practice of government as well as in the symbolic representation of the Restoration regimes. As it turns out, to construct a convincing concept of monarchic legitimacy to a large extent relied on the kind of men the two Kings were imagined to be.

Louis XVIII: a good father or a ridiculous sovereign?
The interlude of the Hundred Days, during which Bonaparte managed to regain power for one last time, is perhaps the single most important event separating the Dutch and French Restorations, so similar in many other ways. Because of this event the years 1814 and 1815 appear to be a period of successive political crises around no less than three regime changes, resulting in the final defeat of the Napoleonic army on the battlefield of Waterloo. On a cultural level, the French could witness a veritable battle of images that took place parallel to the fighting on the battlefields. The growing flow of anti-Napoleonic caricatures that had arrived in France shortly before the fall of the Empire now gave way to a second flow of pro-Napoleonic and anti-royalist images. These political caricatures are an excellent source for studying the role masculinity played in the visual assaults on the main character of the low countries histories of masculinity Whereas before the return of Napoleon the légende noire dominated public discourse presenting the former emperor as a bloodthirsty and megalomaniac tyrant, after the Hundred Days a torrent of caricatures were published with the aim to unmask the great hero as unmanly, that is a small, cowardly figure without honour. That the emphasis shifted in this way was certainly due to the fact that Napoleon's return in 1815 was accompanied by a modified imago -that of the republican soldier (again) rather than the worthy emperor of the later years. 16 Thus Napoleon's image was reconnected with the idealised French soldier already represented during the revolution in portrait prints of anonymous soldiers as the embodiment of the nation. The nation, the army and self-conscious and heroic masculinity became one and the same thing in those prints. 17 It is against this background that the anti-royalist caricatures of the Hundred Days must be interpreted. Those caricatures accused both Louis XVIII and the noble emigrants who were returning to France in 1814 of lacking heroic manliness. 18 Louis was depicted as a coward because he had fled the country for the second time instead of facing the battle head-on.
Furthermore his claim to sovereignty in France was ridiculed by pointing out that he would never have recaptured the throne were it not for the help of foreign armies. The most striking prints are a whole series that updated the revolutionary opposition between homme nouveau and aristocrate by applying it against the King as, for instance, in the engraving 'Le revenant' which was published shortly before the second return of Louis XVIII. The heavy-weight Louis returned to a country that embraced an ideal of masculinity that was at odds with a King who had neither fought in an army nor could use his bodily appearance to connect his person with this ideal. At low countries histories of masculinity odes and chansons adopted this attribute. Of course the idea of the King as a 'good father' was a fairly 'traditional' notion, but then, in a country as utterly transformed as France there was no longer any immediately evident 'traditional' notion of what the ideal features of a King should be. After all, Napoleon had created his own version of monarchical leadership in the preceding years.
In the months following, numerous publications, among which many popular lyrical texts, disseminated an image of Louis XVIII as a good, just, gentle, affectionate, sympathetic, virtuous and benevolent father of his people. 22 This image is framed by the specific context of the texts telling the story of a melodramatic turnaround of the French fate, in which a sombre past is followed by a happy present. Napoleon, usually called 'usurper' or 'tyrant', is not only an essential aspect of this negative view of the past but is also presented as the antithesis to Louis. In this opposition the new King's sensibility plays a crucial role. Napoleon, in line with the légende noire, stands for the inhumanity of a war he is believed to have waged in an egotistical and ambitious manner, while the sensitive Louis takes seriously the sorrows of his people. 23 In this discourse Napoleon and Louis embody two different models of male authority. Bonaparte represents the strong, resolute and assertive but also egotistical ruler who is longing for glory and compels his people to follow him on his ultimately fatal path. Louis, in contrast, epitomises sympathy, prudence, the capacity to forgive and above all the care for the wellbeing of the people.
The fact that Louis embodied a very different role model of political authority than Napoleon distinguished him in a positive way from his predecessor. The opposition of the Napoleonic caricatures of the Hundred Days was thus turned upside down, but the contrast goes even further than that. Louis' specific ability to 'heal our wounds' and 'dry our tears' 24 results from a sensibility that is linked to two further aspects: his painful experience of exile and his If too much forgiving is a weakness; Praise your own kindness; The usurper will be even more annoyed.
In history we oppose, (And this triumph is due to you) To all the crimes of his glory The weaknesses of your virtue. 25 Following up on this image, the texts, and some printed images, published after the Hundred Days presented a weak King who even expressed his sensibility in tears, an imagery that was in line with the sentimental melodramas of the time and that furthermore underlines how important Louis' empathy for the people was in the eyes of the public. 26 The apparent attraction of this discourse about Louis as a loving and fragile father is certainly related to the manner in which the political emancipation and its following crises had been reflected culturally in the In spite of all these apparent advantages, the King as a good and sympathetic father remained under fire from the military-heroic ideal of the manly soldier, as it was used by the clandestine Bonapartist movements. It is perhaps due to this ambivalence that aside from the image of Louis as the good father there was another influential political symbol of male royal authority, namely the historic French King Henri IV. In the mythic image that was constructed around him Henri IV combined the quality of sympathy with the glory of a courageous commander-in-chief, he embodied at one and the same time the good and compassionate father of his people and its heroic military leader. Henri IV was given symbolic weight that, for many different reasons, was quite impossible for Louis XVIII to acquire. 34 However, as a national myth of the monarchy, the figure of Henri IV also formed an easy target for the Bonapartist movement that was gaining strength just when the cult of Henri IV reached its apex.
As it turned out, reintegrating heroism in the representation of monarchy in the figure of Henri IV virtually provoked Bonapartist chansonniers like Pierre-Jean Béranger to react critically to it in an ironic manner. It was an easy task since one only had to allude to the fact that Henri's praised heroism had virtually nothing to do with Louis XVIII, who had 'conquered' his throne only by grace of the allied forces -unlike the implicitly present Bonaparte. As a consequence Louis' tenderness simply turns -once again -into a ridiculously failed heroism: We wish to honour our father With our childlike minds; If we will live together as brothers; We not be stricken by disaster or need, Then God will give us his blessings, The Netherlands will be truly great! 41 The spouse and the mother of William I, both named Wilhelmina of Prussia, as 'mothers of the nation' are sometimes mentioned in the pamphlets, but do not figure very prominently in the representations of the early Dutch monarchy in the years 1813-1815. 42 The King and especially his eldest son, the heir to the throne, are the key-figures in the publications on the returned house of Orange. Unlike the French case with its emphasis on the niece of Louis XVIII, the imagery of the Dutch monarchy to a large extent was a men's world.
Two types of representation of William I can be discerned in these pamphlets that celebrated the establishment of the Orange rule in 1813-1815.
The division between these two types, however, is not absolute. One type of pamphlet, often but not always written by a reformed pastor, interpreted the return of the son of the last Stadholder in essence as a return to Christian religion ('The God of our fathers') and morality after an age of atheism and moral corruption of the revolution and especially Napoleonic rule. The return of Orange, usually described in biblical terms as the 'redemption' (verlossing), was seen as a moment of religious and spiritual renewal of Dutch society, the 'new Israel'. In these religiously inspired pamphlets implicit parallels were often drawn between father William who ruled over the nation and God the father who ruled over mankind with fatherly love, without of course implying that William himself had divine characteristics. The Christian faith was depicted as a 'dearly beloved mother' who stood next to the 'fatherly throne' of William as the parents of the Dutch nation. In these writings the sovereign was a caring shepherd as well as loving father. His emphasis of forgiveness (of political sins) and healing of wounds was reminiscent of Christ himself. 43 In the second type, William is seen in first instance as the slayer of despotism   low countries histories of masculinity joys of his subjects. 55 Manly sensitivity, to sum up, was an integral part of the representation of William I as the good father. 56 In contrast to France, however, this Dutch discourse of the compassionate father was not used to counter the representation of Napoleon as the embodiment of true military masculinity. In the Dutch pamphlets and caricatures between 1813-1815, William I was never depicted as effeminate and lacking in masculinity. 57 Nevertheless, also in the Dutch pamphlets a stark contrast was drawn between the good Dutch manliness of father William and the evil bloodthirsty manliness of the 'tyrant' and 'monster' Napoleon. Both types of manliness were explicitly contrasted in the publications: 'We did not see a tender father, we only saw a warlord', one author wrote about Napoleon as ruler of the Netherlands. 58 In the eyes of the Dutch authors Napoleon was a 'man eater', unable to control his insatiable lust for power. His type of manliness was seen as typically foreign and distinctly 'unDutch' by writers after 1813. 59 The only ruler whose masculinity was actually questioned in the Dutch public opinion after 1813 was the first King of the Netherlands: Louis Napoleon (r. 1806Napoleon (r. -1810