Géricault's Raft of the Medusa as Political Critique

The Bourbon Restoration and the Wreck of the Méduse

The so-called Bourbon Restoration, which lasted from roughly 1814 to 1830, saw the end of Napoleon's reign as well as the beginning of the end for the empire he established. Although the true end of France's colonial aspirations would not come until the twentieth century, Napoleon's reign was the high-water mark for France as a global imperial power. The Bourbon Restoration, while representing the return of the monarchy, was therefore also a period of distinct imperial decline wherein French power — both military and cultural — evaporated. When looking at the first few years of the Bourbon Restoration, one can see the beginnings of this almost inevitable decline even as the restored monarchy attempted to portray itself with the same pomp and glory that had marked Napoleon's imperial reign and the old monarchy which had preceded him.

The Bourbon Restoration began with an inauspicious start, when, "after enduring but little over ten months the restored Monarchy had collapsed like a pack of cards," as Napoleon returned from exile and Louis XVIII was forced to flee (Hall 70). After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the monarchy regained power seemingly as a last resort — the only possible means by which France could retain some form of sovereignty in the face of dedicated and allied opposition. The government that emerged from this defeat was "an attempt to graft upon Absolute Monarchy, which had been revived by Napoleon, a Parliamentary and Constitutional form of government similar to that of England," and, much like an organism rejecting the grafting of an alien organ, this attempt resulted in the destruction of both the absolute monarchy and the newly established parliamentary organ via the revolution of 1830 (Ormathwaite 110).

The reign of Louis and his successors was so clearly disastrous for the country that by 1872, one author remarked that "the history of the first Bourbon Restoration and of the circumstances of its failure is so well-known, and so much within the personal recollection of men still existing, that it seems almost a tiresome repetition of what newspaper articles and contemporary reviews have already taught us, to recapitulate them" (Ormathwaite 110). The failure of the Bourbon regime was due to a combination of indifference and incompetence, combined with a dedication to old grudges born out of the Napoleonic Wars — grudges that would ultimately serve to undermine Louis XVIII's authority and destabilize the country.

However, well before the Bourbon monarchy was again "overthrown by a popular insurrection, and vanquished in a street fight," an event occurred which seemed to serve as an omen for the ruin to come and laid bare the impotency of the monarchy and its supporters just as it was seeking to reestablish its legitimacy. In the summer of 1816, just a year after Napoleon's decisive defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and the "second chance" for the recently reascended Bourbon monarchy, the "low moment in French history" that was the Bourbon Restoration was marred by the wreck of a French naval frigate, the Méduse, carrying the newly-appointed governor of Senegal (Athanassoglou-Kallmyer 811).

"France had only just reacquired its West African territories in the treaty that finally ended the Napoleonic Wars," and so the rapid installation of a new governor was paramount in demonstrating the new regime's control over its empire (Brandt 171). Thus, while the wreck itself would have been embarrassing enough, the decisions of the captain, the governor, and the officers of the ship catapulted the Méduse into the public eye and stained the monarchy forever by demonstrating in gory detail the incompetence and indifference of the Bourbon regime just as it was attempting to demonstrate its legitimacy by reclaiming its former colonies. More specifically, the grounding of the Méduse sixty miles off the coast of western Africa would not have proved such a public humiliation and repudiation of Bourbon rule had it not been captained by a Royalist appointee with limited skill, and had that captain not made the decision to abandon a raft carrying 147 people in order to ensure the safety of the new governor and himself.

Over the course of thirteen days, the passengers on the raft died by drowning, starvation, suicide, or murder, and the few remaining survivors brought with them stunning accounts of the event. Even the atrocities committed by and upon the passengers on the raft were not enough to rattle the monarchy, however. It would not be until two years later, when the published account of two survivors inspired a young painter to immortalize the events, that the full impact of the raft of the Méduse would be felt. The painter, Théodore Géricault, imbued his image with political imagery, and The Raft of the Medusa may be interpreted as a direct critique of the bungling, haphazard governance of the Bourbon regime — a critique that predicts the crumbling of imperial power over the course of the Bourbon Restoration and the "bloody class war" that would ultimately result in a second revolution (Ledbury 608). Thus, while Géricault's painting was ostensibly focused on recent atrocities, it also pointed towards France's future, and the critique it proposes serves as a kind of looking glass through which one can interpret the Bourbon Restoration as a whole.