Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I
by baron Pierre Alexandre Édouard Fleury de Chaboulon · English · Gutenberg #22345 · 604,053 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I
Author: baron Pierre Alexandre Édouard Fleury de Chaboulon
Release date: August 17, 2007 [eBook #22345]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22345
Credits: Produced by StevenGibbs, Christine P. Travers and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF THE PRIVATE LIFE, RETURN, AND REIGN OF NAPOLEON IN 1815, VOL. I ***
Produced by StevenGibbs, Christine P. Travers and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
spelling has been maintained.]
MEMOIRS
OF THE
PRIVATE LIFE,
RETURN, AND REIGN
OF
NAPOLEON
IN 1815.
_Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habes._ SCIPIO.
BY M. FLEURY DE CHABOULON,
Ex-Secretary of the Emperor Napoleon and of his Cabinets,
Master of Requests to the Council of State, Baron, Officer
of the Legion of Honour, and Knight of the Order of Reunion.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
1820.
TO THE READER.
The revolution of the 20th of March will form unquestionably the most
remarkable episode in the life of Napoleon, so fertile as it is in
supernatural events. It has not been my intention, to write the
history of it: this noble task is above my powers: I have only
attempted, to place Napoleon on the stage of action, and oppose his
words, his deeds, and the truth, to the erroneous assertions of
certain historians, the falsehoods of the spirit of party, and the
insults of those timeserving writers, who are accustomed to insult in
misfortune those, to whom they have subsequently paid court.
Hitherto people have not been able to agree on the motives and
circumstances, that determined the Emperor, to quit the island of
Elba. Some supposed, that he had acted of his own accord: others, that
he had conspired with his partisans the downfal of the Bourbons. Both
these suppositions are equally false. The world will learn with
surprise, perhaps with admiration, that this astonishing revolution
was the work of two individuals and a few words.
The narrative of Colonel Z***, so valuable from the facts it reveals,
appears to me to merit the reader's attention in other respects. On
studying it carefully, we find in it the exhibition of those defects,
those qualities, those passions, which, confounded together, form the
character, so full of contrasts, of the incomprehensible Napoleon. We
perceive him alternatively mistrustful and communicative, ardent and
reserved, enterprising and irresolute, vindictive and generous,
favourable to liberty and despotic. But we see predominant above all,
that activity, that strength, that ardour of mind, those brilliant
inspirations, and those sudden resolves, that belong only to
extraordinary men, to men of genius.
The conferences I had at Bale with the mysterious agent of Prince
Metternich have remained to this day buried in profound secrecy. The
historians, who have preceded me, relate, without any explanation,
that the Duke of Otranto laid before the Emperor, at the moment of his
abdication, a letter from M. de Metternich; and that this letter,
artfully worded, had determined Napoleon to abdicate, in the hope that
the crown would devolve to his son. The particulars given in these
Memoirs will entirely change the ideas formed of this letter, and of
its influence. They confirm the opinion too, pretty generally
prevalent, that the allied sovereigns deemed the restoration of the
Bourbons of little importance, and would willingly have consented, to
place the young Prince Napoleon on the throne.
It had been supposed, that the famous decree, by which Prince de
Talleyrand and his illustrious accomplices were sent before the courts
of justice, was issued at Lyons in the first burst of a fit of
vengeance. It will be seen, that it was the result of a plan simply
political: and the noble resistance, which General Bertrand (now
labouring under a sentence of death) thought it his duty to oppose to
this measure, will add, if it be possible, to the high esteem, merited
on so many accounts by this faithful friend to the unfortunate.
The writings published previously to this work, equally contain
nothing but inaccurate or fabulous reports, with regard to the
abdication of Napoleon. Certain historians have been pleased, to
represent Napoleon in a pitious state of despondency: others have
depicted him as the sport of the threats of M. Regnault St. Jean
d'Angely, and of the artifices of the Duke of Otranto. These Memoirs
will show, that Napoleon, far from having fallen into a state of
weakness, that would no longer permit him to wield the sceptre,
aspired, on the contrary, to be invested with a temporary
dictatorship, and that, when he consented to abdicate, it was because
the energetic attitude of the representatives disconcerted him, and he
yielded to the fear of adding the calamities of a civil war to the
disasters of a foreign invasion.
It was perfectly unknown too, that Napoleon was detained a prisoner at
Malmaison after his abdication. It was presumed, that he deferred his
departure, in the hope of being replaced at the head of the army and
of the government. These Memoirs will show, that this hope, if it
dwelt within the breast of Napoleon, was not the real motive of his
stay in France; and that he was detained there by the committee of
government, till the moment when, honour outweighing all political
considerations, it obliged Napoleon to depart, to prevent his falling
into the hands of Blucher.
The negotiations and conferences of the French plenipotentiaries with
the enemy's generals; the proceedings of the Prince of Eckmuhl; the
intrigues of the Duke of Otranto; the efforts of those members of the
committee, who remained faithful to their trust; the debates on the
capitulation of Paris, and all the collateral facts, connected with
these different circumstances, had been totally misrepresented; These
Memoirs establish or unfold the truth. They bring to light the conduct
of those members of the committee, who were supposed to be the dupes
or accomplices of Fouche; and that of the marshals, the army, and the
chambers. They contain also the correspondence of the plenipotentiaries,
and the instructions given to them; documents hitherto unpublished,
which will make known, what the politics and wishes of the government
of France at that time were.
Finally I shall observe, in order to complete the account I think it
right to give the reader of the substance of this work, that it
furnishes elucidations of the campaign of 1815, the want of which has
been imperiously felt. The causes, that determined Napoleon, to
separate from his army at Laon, were not known: I point them out.
General Gourgaud, in his narrative, could give no explanation of the
march of the corps of Count Erlon at the battle of Ligny, of the
conduct of Marshal Ney on the 16th, of the inactivity of Napoleon on
the 17th, &c. All these points, I believe, I have elucidated. I show
also, that it was not, as General Gourgaud and other writers assert,
to raise the spirits, and excite the courage of the French army, that
its leader announced to it the arrival of Marshal Grouchy. It is a
certain fact, that Napoleon was himself deceived by a brisk firing,
which took place between the Prussians and Saxons; and it is falsely,
that he has been charged with having knowingly deceived his soldiers,
at a moment when the laws of war and of humanity presented to him, to
think rather of a retreat, than of continuing the battle.
I had at first rejected from these Memoirs such official papers, as
had already been made known: but have since thought, that they ought
to be inserted. This work, which embraces all the events of the reign
of a Hundred Days, would be imperfect, if the reader were obliged to
refer to the papers of the day; to read or consult the act of the
congress of Vienna, that placed the Emperor Napoleon out of the pale
of the law of nations; the Additional Act, which occasioned his loss
of popularity; and the eloquent speeches and nervous declarations by
which Napoleon, his ministers, and his counsellors, sought to explain
and justify the 20th of March. I have thought, besides, that perhaps
the reader would not find it uninteresting, to witness the contests
exhibited, at that important period, between the legitimacy of
nations and the legitimacy of sovereigns.
The colours under which I represent Napoleon, the justice I do him for
the purity of his intentions, will not please all the world. Many
persons, who would blindly have believed any ill I could say of the
ancient sovereigns of France, will give little credit to my eulogies:
they are wrong: if praises lavished on power be suspicious, those
bestowed on the unfortunate will be true; to doubt them would be
sacrilege.
Neither can I conceal from myself, that the men, who, from principle,
see nothing but a hateful conspiracy in the revolution of the 20th of
March, will accuse me of having embellished facts, and designedly
distorted the truth. No matter: I have depicted this revolution as I
saw it, as I felt it. How many others are pleased, to tarnish the
honour of the nation, to represent their countrymen as composed of
rebels or cowards! For my part, I think it the duty of a good
Frenchman, to prove to all Europe, that the king was not guilty of
abandoning France:
That the insurrection of the 20th of March was not the work of a few
factious persons, who might have been repressed; but a grand national
act, against which the efforts and volitions of individuals would have
been vain:
That the royalists were not cowards, and all other Frenchmen traitors:
Lastly, that the return from the island of Elba was the terrible
consequence of the faults of ministers and the ultras, which called to
France the man of fate, as the conductor draws down the lightning from
heaven.
This sentiment naturally led me, to conclude these Memoirs by a
philosophical examination of the Hundred Days, and a refutation of the
reproaches daily bestowed on the men of the 20th of March: but
considerations, easy to divine, held my pen. It was my duty, to
content myself with placing a statement of the facts before the eyes
of the grand jury, the public, and leave it to decide. I know, that
the question has been determined in the fields of Waterloo; but a
victory is not a judicial sentence.
Whatever opinion the impartial reader may form of this work, I can
protest beforehand, that I have not allowed myself to be influenced by
any private consideration, by any feeling of hatred, affection, or
gratitude. I have followed no impulse but that of my conscience, and I
may say with Montaigne: "This is an honest book."
Too young to have participated in the errors or crimes of the
revolution, I began and ended my political career without blot, and
without reproach. The places, titles, and decorations, which the
Emperor deigned to bestow on me, were the reward of several acts of
great devotion to his service, and of twelve years of trials and
sacrifices. Never did I receive from him any favours or gifts: I
entered his service rich, I quitted it poor.
When Lyons opened to him its gates, I was free: I spontaneously
embraced his cause: it appeared to me, as to the immense number of
Frenchmen, that of liberty, honour, and our country. The laws of
Solon declared infamous those, who took no part in civil troubles. I
followed their maxims. If the misfortunes of the 20th of March must
fall on the heads of the guilty, these guilty, I repeat, will not be
in the eye of posterity, the Frenchmen who abandoned the royal
standard, to return to the ancient colours of their country; but those
imprudent and senseless men, who, by their threats, their acts of
injustice, and their outrages, compelled us to choose between
insurrection and slavery, between honour and infamy.
During the Hundred Days, there was no person to whom I did an ill
turn; frequently I had an opportunity of doing good, and seized it
with joy.
Since the return of the regal government, I have lived tranquil and
solitary; and, whether from forgetfulness, or from a sense of justice,
I escaped in 1815 the persecutions, which the partisans and servants
of Napoleon experienced.
This explanation, or this apology, appeared to me necessary: it is
right the reader should know, who it is that addresses him.
I could have wished, to abstain from speaking of the royal government
in the first part of this work: but it was impossible. It was
necessary for me, prominently to exhibit the errors and faults of the
king's ministers one by one, to render evident this truth, _that they
were the sole authors of the 20th of March_. When elsewhere, as here,
I say the government, I mean not to designate the King, but his
ministers. In a constitutional monarchy, in which the ministers are
responsible, we cannot, and ought not to confound them with the King.
"It is from the King," said the keeper of the seals, when he proposed
to the deputies of the nation the project of a law on the
responsibility of ministers, "that every act of equity, protection,
and clemency, and every regular employment of power, emanates: it is
to the ministers alone, that abuses, injustice, and misconduct, are to
be imputed."
MEMOIRS,
&c. &c.
Until the close of the Spanish war, Napoleon, whether as the First
Consul of the Republic, or as the Chief of the Empire, had never
ceased to be the object of the love, the pride, and the confidence of
the people. But the multitude neither judge, nor can judge of the
actions of their rulers but from appearances which often mislead them
in their judgment; and the loyalty of the nation then became
enfeebled. The conduct of Napoleon was stigmatized as a series of
hateful aggressions; the war, as an unjustifiable act of violence.
Disaffection increased. Napoleon was assailed by the anger of his
subjects, and, for the first time, they upbraided him with having
spilt their blood, and wasted their riches, in gratifying his vain and
culpable ambition.
At this juncture the public mind became absorbed in the contemplation
of the invasion of Russia, and the general discontent was withdrawn
from the events which had taken place in the peninsula.
Our arms were crowned with good fortune and glory at the commencement
of the Russian war; but that conflict was ended by a catastrophe which
has no parallel in the annals of the world.
The Emperor, who escaped almost alone from the perils of the campaign,
returned to the capital. His countenance was that of a hero who defies
adversity. But his firmness was deemed to be the result of heartless
insensibility. Instead of inspiring the people with hope, it
embittered their feelings. Louder murmurs broke forth; their
indignation expressed itself with greater emphasis. Yet such was the
enthusiasm which was even then inspired by the proud recollections of
the triumphs of Napoleon, that France, blushing for her disgrace,
implored him to win new victories. Armies formed themselves as if by
enchantment, and Napoleon stood again in the midst of Germany, more
terrible than ever.
After we had conquered at Lutzen, at Bautzen, and at Dresden, the
battle of Leipsic was fought[1]. Never before that day had we been
doomed to witness our national armies flying before the enemy. The
scattered wrecks of our battalions, which had been created by the last
hope, by the last effort of our country, at length reached our
frontiers. But our soldiers were no longer the vigorous and resolute
warriors of France; they were bowed down by want, toil, and
humiliation. Soon afterwards they were followed by wandering trains of
military carriages, loaded with diseased and wounded wretches, who
festered beneath the corpses amongst which they were heaped, and who
at once absorbed and diffused the germs of pestilence and contagion.
Even the firmest minds now yielded to despair; and the grief
occasioned by the havoc now made amongst our defenders renewed the
sorrows of the mothers and the wives of those who erewhile had
perished in Russia and in Spain. Curses upon Napoleon, the author of
all these evils, resounded from side to side of the empire.
[Footnote 1: The misfortunes of that eventful day,
and of the remainder of the campaign, were caused
by the treachery of the Saxons and the defection of
the Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine.]
As long as good fortune waited upon Napoleon, his most ambitious
attempts commanded the applauses of the nation. We boasted of his
profound political wisdom, we extolled his genius, we worshipped his
courage. When his fortune changed, then his political wisdom was
called treachery, his genius, ambition, and his courage,
fool-hardiness and infatuation.
Napoleon was not to be depressed by ingratitude or misfortune. He
re-assembled the feeble fragments of his armies, and proclaimed aloud
that he would conquer or die at the head of his soldiery. This
resolution only produced a momentary impression. The French, who so
lately believed that the happiness and salvation of France depended
only upon the life of Napoleon, now coolly considered that his death,
the fate which he was prepared to encounter, afforded the only means
of putting an end to the calamities of war, for peace otherwise
appeared unattainable.
Napoleon departed. He achieved prodigies, but to no effect. National
spirit no longer existed, and the nation had gradually sunk into that
state of insensibility so fatal to sovereigns, when the public mind
has no perception of their dangers, and abandons them to their
destiny.
France was thus affected when Napoleon consented to divest himself of
his crown[2]. The apathy of the nation drove him to this extremity;
for it deprived him of the means either of carrying on the war, or of
making peace.
[Footnote 2: Napoleon, according to the common
report, was frequently heard to repeat, after his
abdication, "I have been ruined by liberal ideas."
I do not think that he ever expressed himself in
this manner. I do not intend to doubt the
irresistible force which liberal ideas have now
acquired; but I do not think, that they contributed
to effect the first downfal of the imperial throne.
Nobody thought about liberal ideas at that period.
France had been trained to the government of
Napoleon, and his despotism gave rise to no
complaints. She was not free in the manner
according to which the nation now wishes to enjoy
liberty. But the liberty which France then
possessed was enough for the French. Napoleon would
often exercise unlimited authority, but the country
had only one master, and _he_ was the master of
all. If it is true that the French abandoned
Napoleon in 1814, it was not because we were tired
of Napoleon or discontented with his government,
but because the nation was exhausted, discouraged,
and demoralized by an uninterrupted succession of
calamitous wars. The people would still have been
delighted to obey him, but they had neither
strength nor soul.
The real causes of the downfal of Napoleon are to
be found in his hatred towards England, and in the
continental system, which resulted from that
hatred. This gigantic system, which oppressed all
Europe, could not fail to raise the entire
continent against Napoleon and France, and thus to
bring on the ruin of both. "Rome," as it is said by
Montesquieu, "extended her empire because her wars
only followed in succession. Each nation, such was
her inconceivable good fortune, waited till another
had been conquered, before beginning the attack."
Rome fell as soon as all the nations assailed and
penetrated on every side.]
Hostilities ended with the abdication of Napoleon. The people of
Paris, who had scarcely recovered from the panic with which they were
struck by the marauding hordes of Russia, displayed the most
extravagant gladness when they thought that they were delivered from
the visitation, which again threatened them in the presence of the
allies and the imperial army.
The neighbouring departments, which the enemy prepared to invade,
rejoiced on being relieved from impending pillage and devastation.
The departments which had been occupied by the enemy were intoxicated
with joy, when they anticipated the termination of their sufferings.
Thus almost all the people of France turned away from their discarded
sovereign. And they abandoned themselves to joy when they thought that
they were delivered from the scourge of war, and that they could hope
to enjoy the blessings of peace.
It was in the midst of this pouring out of the spirit of selfishness,
that the senate raised the brother of Louis XVI. to the throne. His
election was not in conformity to the expectations of the people, and
it disappointed the wishes which had been uttered in favour of the
Empress and her son; yet the choice of the senate was but slightly
opposed, because the recall of Louis seemed to be necessarily the
pledge of peace. And peace was more the object of the public wish than
any other thing. Besides which, the Bourbons followed the wise
counsels which had been given to them. They lost no time in issuing
their proclamations, couched in fair language, in order to calm the
fears and diminish the antipathies excited by their recall.
"We will guarantee," said they, "the rank, the honours, and the
rewards of the military.
"The magistracy and all public functionaries shall retain their
offices and their pre-eminence.
"To the people we promise a total oblivion of their political conduct;
and we will maintain them in the full enjoyment of their civil rights,
their property, and their social institutions."
The French nation, whose confidence is so easily abused, considered
these promises as sacred and inviolable, and they delighted in
repeating the happy reply of the Count of Artois[3], "Il n'y aura rien
de change en France, il n'y aura que quelques Francais de plus."
They, the men, who had banished the imperial dynasty, laboured to
foster the growing confidence of the nation. The press was brought
into full play, and the country teemed with publications in which they
represented the sovereign whom they had brought in, as invested with
those attributes which were calculated to conciliate the nation. The
public were carefully informed, that the king "opened and read all the
dispatches himself. It is he who dictates every answer. Where it
becomes necessary to meet the ministers of foreign powers, he
transacts business with them; he receives the reports of their
missions, which he answers either by word of mouth, or in writing. In
short, he alone directs all the concerns of the government, both at
home and abroad. If his virtues and goodness are such as to cause the
French to know that they will now find a kind and affectionate father
in their King, they may also look with confidence to the future fate
of the nation, relying on his brilliant information, his strength of
character, and his aptitude for business[4]."
[Footnote 3: He arrived at Paris before his august
brother, and by these pleasing expressions he
replied to the addresses of congratulation
presented to him by the municipality of Paris.]
[Footnote 4: Extracted from the Journal des Debats.
The principal proprietor and editor of this paper
was Monsieur Laborie, one of Talleyrand's
creatures, and private secretary to the provisional
government.]
Thus the people congratulated themselves, when they were assured that
their Chief Magistrate was an enlightened sovereign, a kind sovereign,
an equitable sovereign, and one who was determined not to allow the
guiding reins of the state to slip from his paternal hands into those
of his ministers. Our lively imagination gave us a present enjoyment
of the blessings, which, as we anticipated, would hereafter be
diffused over the kingdom by his goodness, his prudence, and his
acquirements. If this glowing vision of hope and loyalty was slightly
dimmed by a few secret doubts, such misgivings were checked and
repelled by the name of our native country; nay, by the name of the
Emperor himself. For when Napoleon bade farewell to his trusty
soldiers, it was in these words: "Be faithful to the new sovereign of
France; do not rend asunder our beloved and long-suffering land."
These circumstances (nor must the charm of novelty be excluded) united
in favour of the king, and won every head and every heart. He
appeared--he was received with acclamations of love and gladness,
which resounded until he entered the palace of his forefathers.
No counter revolution ever effected the change of a royal dynasty,
under such favourable auspices.
The French nation felt jaded by civil dissensions, by misfortune--even
their victories had weaned them. They longed for the happiness of
repose. Memorable were the words of the king's brother; "let us forget
the past, let us look only towards the future, let us all unite in the
good work of labouring to heal the wounds of our common country;" and
these honoured precepts had become implanted in every mind. They
formed the canon of all our feelings and all our duties.
As long as the machinery of the new government did not begin to work,
this loyal harmony subsisted, and no longer. For when it became
necessary to settle the organization of the army, the ministry, and
the magistracy, then self-love gained an easy victory over patriotism,
and the bad passions, pride, ambition, and party-hatred, roused
themselves from their slumber.
During a quarter of a century, our emigrants had sojourned in a
strange country. Useless and troublesome guests to the strangers by
whom they were fed, their lives had been droned away in shameless and
cowardly idleness. They could not cheat themselves into a belief that
they possessed the talents and experience of the sons of the
revolution. But they imagined that nobility, as in the old time, might
pass for worth; and that their patents and pedigrees still gave them
a right to monopolize all power and all honour.
The citizens, the soldiers, the nation, relied on the lawfulness of
their rights no less than on the promises of the king. The members of
the old privileged caste, instead of exciting suspicion, were only the
objects of harmless mirth. The people laughed at the grotesque
appearance of some, and at the decrepit sottishness of others. They
never dreamed that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords
had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of
command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had
grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to the direction of
public affairs.
But though merit and valour were denied to them, they stood upon a
vantage ground, which gave them a direful and incalculable
preponderance in the state. They surrounded the throne. Soon did their
insolence announce that they had craftily availed themselves of the
advantages which they possessed; and we foresaw with affliction that
inveterate prejudice, malignant prepossessions, and old habits of
familiarity, would, sooner or later, crush the principles of justice
and equity, however solemnly proclaimed.
The emigrants, rendered arrogant by the prospects which opened upon
them, now treated their rivals with contemptuous disdain. They dared
not insult the defenders of our country face to face, because the
scars of the warriors scared them. But they were spitefully active in
disparaging their birth, their services, and their glory, and these
noble retainers of royalty took care to impress the soldiers of
Napoleon with a due sense of the width of the gulf which was
henceforth to separate a gentleman of good family, from an upstart
soldier of the revolution.
The women of the _ancien regime_ did not share in the timidity which,
to a certain degree, still restrained their husbands. They threw off
all decency and all reserve, and indulged in all the fury of their
spite and pride. Without attempting to disguise their sentiments, they
openly insulted the titled dames belonging to the new nobility, and
such of the latter as were compelled to go to court on account of the
situations held by their husbands, never entered the saloon without
dread, and never quitted it without being bathed in tears.
Uneasy, harassed, and discontented, the people implored the fulfilment
of the king's promises: they prayed with confidence; but the
government heard them not, and repulsed them harshly. The Doge of
Genoa, speaking of Louis XIV, said, "his majesty steals our hearts by
his amiability, but his ministers give them back again to us." The
apophthegm of the Doge might have been pertinently applied to Louis
XVIII. by the people.
Hitherto the government appeared to adhere to the resolution of
dealing out impartial justice to both parties, and of performing the
covenant which the new monarch had entered into with the nation. But
now he was bound by an influence which he could not withstand.
Ensnared by the machinations, the threats, and the fears of his
emigrant court, and perhaps believing that the new order of things was
incompatible with the stability of the Bourbon dynasty, the maxims of
his government underwent a total change. He was taught to consider the
equality of civil rights as a revolutionary conquest, the liberties of
the nation as an usurpation of the authority of the throne, the new
constitution as insulting the independence of the sovereign. It was
therefore determined that all "dangerous characters[5]" should be led
quietly out of all civil and military offices. The old trustworthy
nobility of the old kingdom were again to become the sole depositaries
of the power of the state: and by slow but sure degrees it was
resolved to cancel the royal charter, and either by fair means or by
foul, to place the nation again beneath the yoke of absolute power.
[Footnote 5: This expression was one of those of
which the ministers made the worst use. If they
were told that any magistrate, any officer, any
functionary, whom they had turned out, had
fulfilled his duties with honour and distinction,
that he was loved and regretted by the people, they
answered, "he is a dangerous character," and there
was an end of the business.]
The government often appealed to the authority of the King's
predecessor on the throne--of Bonaparte. Bonaparte, it was said, had
acknowledged that it was dangerous to concede a representative
government to the people, and that it was fit and proper to rule them
despotically. But Napoleon, he who re-established the authority of
royalty, morality, and religion--who had re-organized society--who had
given tranquillity to France, at the same time that he rendered her
formidable to the world--he had earned his authority by his services
and his victories, and, if I may venture to use the expression, he had
acquired a legitimate right of despotism, which neither belonged, nor
could belong, to a Bourbon. Besides which, in spite of the real or
pretended despotism of the imperial government, it was still a
national government; a character wholly foreign to the Bourbon
government, and which it had no tendency to acquire.
The prognostics of the re-action which the ministers intended to bring
about were disclosed in all parts of the body politic. Alarm seized
even the Chamber of Deputies: it hastened to become the organ of the
uneasiness of the people, and to remind the King of the warranty which
he had given to the nation.
In the address, or rather in the protest presented by the chamber on
the 15th of June, the national representatives say, "The charter
secures to the voice of truth every channel which leads to the throne,
since it consecrates the liberty of the press, and the right of
petition.
"Amongst the guarantees which it contains, the nation will attend to
that which insures the responsibility of any minister who may betray
the confidence reposed in him by your Majesty, by trespassing on the
public or private rights insured by the constitutional charter.
"By virtue of this charter, nobility in all future times will only
command the respect of the people as surrounded by proofs of honour
and glory, which the recollections of feudality will not have the
power of tarnishing.
"The principles of civil liberty are founded upon the independence of
judicial authority, and the retention of trial by jury, that
invaluable guarantee of all our rights."
If the King had known the truth, this energetic address would have
attained its end. But the truth could not reach him. At first he
intended to bestow his personal confidence upon the greater part of
the leading "notables" of the revolution; but by means of
remonstrances and recriminations, another party contrived to place his
good sense again under the yoke of prejudice, and he surrounded
himself with old nobility alone, with men who had refused to obey the
constitution sanctioned by Louis XVI., because it destroyed their
privileges; and who, for the same reason, had refused to acknowledge
the new constitution, against which they had even dared to protest.
His companions were so blinded, so besotted by their presumption, that
they imagined that decrees and ordinances gave them the faculty of
overturning the edifice which the nation had erected during five and
twenty years of revolution. His confidents were those alone who,
instead of wishing to reveal to their sovereign the object of the
projects of the ministry, and of the faction which had rendered the
ministry their tools, had become the accomplices of ministerial guilt,
joint conspirators in the plot which was to destroy the royal charter.
The cabinet contained, however, some able and experienced statesmen.
They were convinced that instead of teasing the nation by holding out
the probability of the restoration of ancient privileges, it was the
duty of government to tranquillize the country by guaranteeing the
stability of the new system of polity. These ministers were aware of
the impolicy of attempting to re-establish the monarchy on its ancient
principles; because by such an attempt it would be deprived of the
only advantage which it possessed over the late government--that of
being liberal. And, lastly, they felt that if despotism and violence
had been the distinguishing characteristics of the government of
Napoleon, it was necessary that moderation and justice should be the
attributes of the government of a Bourbon.
But they had not sufficient authority or personal influence to enable
them to struggle against the emigrants, and the protectors of the
emigrant faction. In the council chamber their opinions, often well
concerted, and always benevolent, were sanctioned and approved. Out
of the council, each minister acted according to his own plans; and,
unfortunately, those departments which ramify most deeply into the
nation and its affairs were confided to men who seemed to think that
they were bound to irritate and sour the public mind.
General Dupont obtained the important office of minister of the war
department, as a reward due to his proscription. According to the
government party, the general had been proscribed by the Emperor. An
odious name was thus given to the lenient punishment which had been
inflicted upon Dupont, he who had shuffled off the allegiance which he
owed to his Emperor, and whose cowardice had surrendered into
captivity the legions intrusted to his command[6]. Weak, indolent,
irresolute, devoid of character and resources, he never had the wish
or the ability of becoming any thing else than the pliant functionary
of the court and the ruling courtiers.
[Footnote 6: When Dupont capitulated to the
Spaniards, the insurgents refused to acknowledge
the Emperor. Dupont therefore only took the title
of general in the French service.]
Another, the Abbe de Montesquiou, received the "porte-feuille" of the
home department. When a member of the Constituent Assembly he had
been honourably distinguished by his soft and persuasive eloquence.
The temperance of his public conduct seemed to be insured by his
personal character; he was a servant of the altar, his health was
delicate, he had lived long in quiet retirement. But Montesquiou,
meek, mild, and timid as long as he was in the background, became
scornful, angry, and overbearing the instant that he stepped into
power. He detested and despised the revolution--I may almost say, he
detested and despised the nation. This sentiment was the principle
which guided him. Montesquiou never deigned to inquire whether any
given portion of our polity was sound or useful, whether it had been
formed with difficulty, whether it could be modified, or ameliorated,
or fitted into existing circumstances. He only inquired into the date
of its institution--and the date decided the question.
A third, Dambray, the chancellor, and the chief law officer of the
nation, had distinguished himself in his youth as a Judge of
Parliament. His credit arose from his prudence and his principles no
less than from his talents. He had been long since recalled to his
country. During the reign of Napoleon he fulfilled the duties of a
citizen and a subject with zeal and fidelity. We never doubted but
that he would protect those constitutional forms of government under
which he had flourished in peace and honour. Scarcely, however, was
the Chancellor clothed in his robe, when he became the oppressor of
the magistracy, the antagonist of our new system of jurisprudence, and
the dull partisan of those slavish forms and barbarous customs and
oppressive edicts, which had been long since annihilated by reason,
liberty, and knowledge.
The trust reposed in this portion of the cabinet was a source of
unhappiness to the nation, but it was not the only one. Louis,
according to the promises held out on his restoration, was to reign in
person; and the more the French have ever been desirous to obey their
sovereign with cheerful alacrity, the greater is the repugnance which
they feel to submit to the orders of his minions. Dismay, therefore,
prevailed throughout the kingdom when we learnt that Louis, weakened
by an obstinate and painful disease, had entirely divested himself of
his royal authority in favour of Monsieur de Blacas. And how much more
painful did our consternation become, when we were able to understand
the views and projects of this Mayor of the palace, and when we
ascertained the baneful extent of his ascendancy.
It was impossible that the royal government, including such elements
in its composition, could retain its hold on public opinion. It was
seen too clearly that the effects of a despicable coterie would tend
either to involve our country in a civil war, or overwhelm us again
with the wretchedness and slavery from which we had been delivered by
the revolution.
The absolute necessity of rising in opposition to these nefarious
attempts was felt by the entire country. Not a man would remain
neuter.
During the earliest period of the reign of Louis, the emigrant faction
comprehended nothing but the party composed of the relics of the
ancient privileged cast. The _parvenus_ of the imperial government
alone constituted the so called Bonapartists. Considering their
private gratification and profit as of greater importance than the
public cause, each party had hitherto only wrangled for place and
power. Their war was a matter of calculation and selfishness. But soon
their disputes involved the fate of the main interests created by the
revolution the emigrants directed their attacks not only against
individuals but also against principles, and the people, who had
hitherto only looked on, now shared the quarrel, and all France was
divided into two great hostile parties[7].
[Footnote 7: I speak only of acting and thinking
beings. In all countries there is to be found a
class of cyphers, who are so careless, stupid, or
selfish, that they belong to no party, and indeed
to no nation.]
The court, the courtiers, and the ministry appeared as the central
phalanx of the _pure royalists_. As their auxiliaries, they had the
old nobility,--the priesthood,--a certain number of apostates who had
skulked away from the imperial government,--and lastly, all those who
had been disqualified by their incapacity and disloyalty from
obtaining employment under Napoleon. It was the undisguised wish of
this party to wash out every stain of the revolution, and to effect a
full and unqualified restoration of the _ancien regime_ in all its
parts, and to all intents and purposes.
On the other side were arrayed the party designated as that of the
Bonapartists, led on by our most honourable and most virtuous
citizens, and numbering within its ranks the great body of the people;
this party strove to withstand the impending resuscitation of the
privileges and abuses of the old government, and which was to be
effected only by the total subversion of our existing institutions.
The pure royalists endeavoured to annihilate the charter, which their
opponents defended, and thus a strange contradiction took place. The
royal charter had the royalists for its enemies, whilst its defenders
were only found amongst those who were stigmatized as the adherents of
Bonaparte.
Abortive attempts were made by the pure royalists to palliate the
treachery of the government. They tried to persuade the people that
the tranquillity and welfare of the nation depended but on the
re-establishment of an absolute monarch, of a feudal aristocracy, and
of all the trumpery of superstition. Such was the tendency of the
publications which issued from the ministerial press, owing their
birth to writers who had either sold themselves to the government, or
who had denationalized themselves by their political intolerance. But
it must not be supposed that liberty could remain in need of
advocates.
Each of the earliest stages of the growth of the young government of
royalty had been marked by obscure yet decisive symptoms of bad faith,
not the less mischievous because they were restricted to signs, and
symbols, and phrases. Instead of the constitution voted by the senate,
and which the king had engaged to accept and ratify, he graciously
granted and conceded a charter, by which he gave a new form to the
government; and which, according to its tenor, emanated from the
sovereign in the full and free exercise of his royal authority. The
tricoloured cockade worn by Louis XVI. and which our armies had
rendered illustrious, was exchanged for the white, though to the
mind's eye the latter was seen drenched in the blood of the people.
Louis took the title of Louis XVIII. King of France and Navarre, and
he dated his proclamations and ordinances in the 19th year of his
reign, and thus it was to be inferred, that the nation had been in a
state of rebellion during five and twenty years. He had disdained to
receive his crown from the will of the people, and rather chose to
hold it by divine right and the good offices of the Prince Regent.
These ungracious affronts wounded the national feelings, but no notice
was taken of them at the time, because it was apprehended that angry
recriminations might endanger the profit which had resulted from the
important sacrifices to which we had consented for the public good.
But when the government unveiled its deformity, the silence of the
patriotic party was at end, and they attacked the government most
unrelentingly. The editors of the Censeur were most conspicuous. Every
abuse of power, every violation of the charter, was proclaimed to
France by these young tribunes of the people; and the country was loud
in applauding their zeal, their talents, and their courage. Other
writers of a more lively class stung the emigrants to the quick by
sarcasms and satire, and brought down the chastisement of contempt and
ridicule upon those who had been spared by the gravity of the Censeur.
The nation also obtained a clear development of the anti-revolutionary
conspiracy of the administration, from the "Memoir" of Carnot, and the
pamphlets of Benjamin Constant. The undeniable facts, and the
unwelcome truths which were brought forward and stated by these
writers, apprized the people that their rights and liberties were in
fearful danger.
A judicial blindness had fallen upon the ministers. All warnings, all
lessons, all reproaches, were lost upon them. Far from being awed by
public opinion, they thought they deserved high honour for defying it.
The ministers had made up their mind. Deceived by the opinions which
they had formed respecting the preponderance of their faction, they
miscalculated the influence and resources of the partizans of the
revolution. Confiding in their power, and in the fear inspired by
their power, they thought it useless to maintain any further reserve;
and that they could charge onwards to the end of the career which
they had in view. Intoxicated by their ignorant enthusiasm, they
insulted the nation in the person of each individual, whilst they
encroached upon the rights which he valued most, and insulted him both
in his interests and his feelings. The imperial guard was removed from
Paris: the emigrants grudged the renown of these troops, and feared
their patriotism. It was given out that the discontent evinced by the
guard when the king came in, was the cause of the punishment which
they received[8].--But had not the government called forth this
discontent? Surely it was ungenerous to compel those heroes to walk as
attendants in the triumph of a new master. Their grief and fidelity
deserved not to be thus insulted. I then saw these honoured warriors.
Haggard looks and sullen silence revealed their feelings. Absorbed by
grief, they appeared to be insensible to the outward world. "Vive la
Garde Imperiale" was the shout of the pitying Parisians, who wished
to cheer them. These salutations, which, perhaps, they despised, were
unheeded. Submissive to their superiors, they obeyed the word of
command which told them that they must march: they marched, and that
was all.
[Footnote 8: The accusation that a spirit of mutiny
prevailed amongst them cannot be refuted more
effectually than by quoting the expressions used by
M. de Montesquiou on the 14th of March. "In the
last two months," said he, "not _one_ of the
soldiers or officers belonging to the corps of the
old guard composing the garrison of Metz, has been
_once_ reprimanded."]
Troops of the line replaced the imperial guards, who were drafted out
of the capital with great expedition. Little time elapsed before the
dissatisfaction of the new troops became manifest. The regiments were
wholly disorganized; officers were thrust upon the soldiers, amongst
whom they stood as complete strangers. In consequence of these changes
the troops were put out of temper; and they became disgusted with
service, because they were wearied by endless parades and reviews
which took place, not to perfect them in their discipline, but for the
instruction of their raw commanders. The government broke their spirit
by affronting them: they were compelled to present arms to the king's
body guard, whom they detested. The re-establishment of the "Maison du
Roi" was opposed by the general feeling of the nation, and it
particularly tended to rouse the jealousy and discontent of the
garrison of Paris. The troops of the line and the national guards who
were on duty at the Tuileries could not submit to acknowledge the
"gardes du corps" as their superiors, and refused to present arms to
them. The "gardes du corps" complained, and it was ordered that the
troops of the line should salute them with military honours, or be
punished. After this victory, the young "gardes du corps," who were
proud of it, used to walk up and down before the sentinels, in order
to force the latter to worship their epaulettes. It may easily be
imagined how such childish insults, which were never checked, must
have mortified the old soldiers of Napoleon: and we all know that the
self-love of a Frenchman is not to be offended with impunity.
Self-love is the medium through which the soldier ascends into glory.
When Napoleon earned immortal fame in Italy, he nourished and
dignified this passion by addressing his soldiers in language
breathing the lofty spirit of the heroic age, he rekindled the courage
of his army, and every man became a conqueror. But the royalist
officers sought to destroy all warlike sentiment by expressing their
contempt for our national victories, by displaying the puffed
insolence of birth and rank; and they lost the confidence and the
esteem of the army which they were appointed to command.
Widely different, indeed, was the example which was set by the most
exalted and most formidable of our enemies. It is needless to name
him. This sovereign never tried to undervalue our glory: he was only
happy when he could bear testimony again and again to the talents and
the courage of the French nation. When he received our officers he did
not treat them with that ill-concealed disdain, so often lavished on
the conquered, but with the honest esteem inspired by valour; and with
that delicacy, I would almost say respect, which is due to honourable
misfortune. The subject of his discourse sometimes compelled him to
allude to our reverses; but he never failed to allay the smart by
lavishing his praises on the efforts which we had made to deprive him
of victory. He seemed to be astonished that he had been able to
withstand us.
How deeply were our warriors affected when they contrasted his
chivalrous magnanimity with the endeavours of their royalist masters,
who tried incessantly to poison the fond recollection of their former
triumphs, and to deprive them of the only consolation which remained
to them in the hour of affliction.
Whatever discontent might prevail amongst the troops, yet the greater
part of the staff and regimental officers had transferred themselves
to the Bourbons with cordial sincerity. Perhaps a few, who were less
confident than the rest, still appeared distrustful and lukewarm; but
they might have been easily won over, either by those sugared and
alluring phrases which sound so sweetly when pronounced by royalty, or
even by merely leaving them quiet until their resentment could cool of
itself.
When Henry IV. recovered his throne, the bigoted partisans of the
league, whom he had pardoned, continued still to threaten and revile
him. It was suggested that he should punish them; but Henry said,
"No,--we must wait, they are yet vexed." Those who were constantly
invoking the memory of good king Henry, never sought to imitate his
conduct. Instead of allowing time to our generals to get over their
vexation, they embittered their temper by daily insults. Our officers
were treated like ruffian bandits; they were branded as rebels, who
were too happy if they obtained a pardon. Praise and favour fell only
to the share of the army of Conde, the Vendeans, and the Chouans. The
triumphal arches destined to eternize the exploits of our armies were
menaced with sacrilegious ruin; and it was solemnly proposed to erect
a monument to the memory of the Vendeans and the emigrants who fell at
Quiberon.
Certainly our deluded brethren deserved to be regretted and mourned.
Yet they had turned their weapons against the sacred bosom of their
country. They were either the auxiliaries or the hirelings of our
implacable enemies the English, and if honours were paid to them as
illustrious victims, it was equivalent to a declaration that their
conquerors were their murderers.
Our warriors had been graced with titles of nobility, bought with the
blood which they had shed in the defence of the country. Their honours
were treated with insolent scorn, and the ghost of Georges Cadoudal, a
murderer in effect, and a traitor in intent, was ennobled by the
gracious patent which was bestowed upon his father.
Georges in attempting the life of Napoleon had committed an act
against all law, whether human or divine. If such a crime was decked
out as a virtue, if signal rewards were allotted to the memory of the
criminal, the government abetted assassination and regicide. The
safety of Louis XVIII. and of every other monarch was compromised, and
a sanction was given to the dangerous and antisocial doctrine which
teaches that any individual may sit in judgment on the legitimacy of
the title of the occupier of the throne, and then determine to murder
his sovereign if he doubts the validity of his rights.
Other affronts exactly of the same complexion were offered to France
and to the army. Titles, military commissions, and pensions, were
showered, in La Vendee, upon the heads of such of the Chouans as were
most celebrated for their cruelty[9], and these marks of favour were
distributed amongst them in the presence of the victims of their
rapine and ferocity.
[Footnote 9: The Chouans never allowed the
opportunity of committing murder to escape them.
They carried their muskets as they walked by the
side of the plough, and the furrows which they trod
were frequently sprinkled with blood. The priests
who had taken the oaths, and the purchasers of
national domains, were particularly the objects of
the refinements of their cruelty. They seldom
entered a town without plundering the inhabitants,
and without slaughtering those who had been pointed
out to their vengeance.--_Lacretelle, Precis de la
Revolution._]
The members of the ruling faction thought that they had not done
enough in endeavouring to honour the French enemies of France at the
expense of her defenders, and therefore they compassed the degradation
and destruction of the institutions which reminded the people of the
praises and the glory of our national armies.
In despite of the most solemn engagements the government robbed the
legion of honour of its prerogatives. Then the ministerial papers
hinted that henceforward the order of St. Louis was to be the only
military order; and that the legion of honour was to be the reward of
civil merit. The blow was aimed at the heart; the army shuddered, our
marshals burned with indignation. The government was compelled to
disclaim and abandon its intent.
Yet one sure method of debasing the legion of honour was completely in
the power of government; they could make it cheap, and to this plan
they resorted. Under Napoleon the Cross was never granted until it had
been long and truly deserved: now it became the prey of meanness. The
order was prostituted and cast to favourite underlings and intriguers,
to whom it was distributed by caprice or bribery.
Our soldiers, who had purchased this distinction with their
blood,--the magistrates, the functionaries, the learned, the
manufacturers, who had received it as the reward of the services which
they had rendered to the state, to the arts, to useful industry,--all
were filled with consternation when they found themselves elbowed by a
mean and worthless mob. Yielding to their honest pride, the greater
part of our old legionaries refused to wear the insignia, which,
instead of conferring distinction, could only confound them with men
whom public opinion had branded and proscribed.
Success encouraged the government, and they did not stop. Richly
endowed asylums for the daughters of the deceased members of the
legion had been founded by the Emperor. Under the pretext of economy,
of saving the annual sum of forty thousand francs, the ministers took
the King by surprise, and hurried the Sovereign into the signature of
an order for turning the orphans out of doors. Marshal Macdonald
declared in vain that the old leaders of the army would never abandon
the children of their companions, and that they were ready to defray
the expense which was falsely assigned as the motive of the expulsion
of the girls. Equally fruitless was the generosity of Madame Delchan,
the matron of the establishment of Paris, who offered to continue its
management without any assistance from the government, and to expend
her entire fortune in the support of her pupils. Nor did the ministers
pay the least attention to those who stated that the greater part of
the children had neither friends nor relations, and that if they were
thrown destitute upon the world, they would be inevitably consigned to
misery or vice. No consideration could move the pity of the ministry.
But at length the indignation of the public found a voice in the Lower
House, and the representatives of the people were about to remonstrate
with the Sovereign. Ministers were disconcerted and abashed, and they
abandoned their profligate enterprise.
This check, however, did not amend them. A few days afterwards they
dissolved the military academies of St. Cyr and St. Germain, alleging
that they were superfluous; and at the same moment the "Ecole Royale
Militaire" was re-established, "in order that the nobility of the
kingdom might enjoy the advantages secured to them by the edict of
January 1757."
By this impudent violation of the principles of the charter our
representatives were again roused, and the ministers were again
obliged to recede.
Irritated by these defeats, they sought revenge and actuated by an
ill-judged hope of weakening the resisting obstacles, they dismissed a
countless multitude of military officers, who were turned out of the
army upon half pay, though their full pay had been formally
guarantied. It must be acknowledged that the number of the officers of
the imperial army was much greater than was required by the strength
of the royal army; but as it was alleged that they were useless and
expensive, it was not right to insult them in their misfortunes by
ministerial profusion; for, at the same time, they saw the government
granting rank and pay to a number of emigrants who were good for
nothing in the army. The government raised six thousand "gardes du
corps," troops of musketeers and light horse, "gendarmes de la garde,"
&c. who scandalized Paris, and disgusted the army by their new
epaulettes, and their sumptuous and splendid uniforms. Lastly, the
government, led on by its innovating madness, did not respect those
veterans whom Death had spared on the field of battle. Without pitying
age or infirmities, the ministers, using their accustomed pretext of
economy, withdrew the benefactions which a grateful nation had
bestowed upon two thousand five hundred of these objects of
compassion.
Since the ministers did not dread giving public offence to the army,
and in matters where the offence would be felt most acutely,--since
they refused to recognize both its services and its rights, it may be
easily supposed that the military were disgusted and oppressed when
they appeared before the ministry as individuals. It is not intended
to detail the complaints and accusations which then justly abounded;
but one fact may be stated as giving a double illustration of the
spirit which prevailed.
General Milhaud had distinguished himself in the course of our
national wars, by success and bravery. At the time when France was
invaded by the allies, he "covered himself with glory" at the head of
a handful of dragoons, who cut a considerable corps of the enemy's
troops entirely to pieces. This officer, in consequence of his rank,
his standing, and his services, had been appointed a chevalier de St.
Louis as a matter of right; but at the moment of his reception, the
cross was taken from him with ignominy, because he had been so
unfortunate as to vote for the death of the King twenty years before.
Louis XVIII., when he returned to France, had promised that he would
not inquire into the votes which had been given against his august
brother. This promise, which had been demanded from him, and which he
ratified by his charter, could not be otherwise than a painful victory
over the feelings of his heart. He must have grieved when he found
himself under the necessity of admitting those judges into his court,
who had condemned Louis XVI. to the scaffold, and to present them to
the daughter of the murdered monarch. But still he had sworn not to
avenge his death, and the oaths by which a monarch binds himself to
his people should be inviolable.
All resentment was to be repressed. The voters had been pardoned, and
therefore the government could not be justified in reviving the memory
of their crime, and in bringing down vengeance and death upon their
heads. A funeral veil ought to have been drawn over that period of our
revolution, during which we were all equally misled or guilty.
Besides, we must state plainly and distinctly, that the grief excited
by the murder of Louis XVI., was not the true cause of the invectives
with which the regicides were assailed by the emigrants. Unfortunately
the effect produced at Coblentz by the trial and execution of the
king, is too well known. If the errors of some of the men of the
revolution were hunted out with so much malignant zeal, it was only
for the purpose of coming to this result--that as the revolution was
the work of crime, it was necessary to root out every thing which had
proceeded from the revolution.
The insult to which General Milhaud was subjected, was therefore
rather a political movement, than a punishment inflicted on an
individual. In selecting Milhaud as the object of the first assault
against the regicides, the government gave a proof of their want of
tact; for if they wanted to render the regicides contemptible or
odious, they should have avoided attacking an officer who had long
since washed away the stains of the blood of his King, by imbruing
himself in the blood of our enemies!
But whilst the military, from the highest to the lowest, were exposed
to the persecution and tyranny of the prevailing faction, the
magistracy, and the civil functionaries of the state, suffered no less
from ill treatment and injustice. Commissioners had been despatched
into the departments, even at the beginning of the new reign, "in
order to consolidate the royal government, and to examine into the
conduct of the public functionaries under existing circumstances;"
that is to say, at the moment of the restoration of the Bourbons.
Such was the confidence which the nation placed in the promises of the
King, that no jealousy was excited by this measure. On the contrary,
people expected that great good would result from it, that party heat
would be allayed, and public interest and opinion become more speedily
united to the throne.
This pleasing illusion was soon dispelled. A great number of
emigrants, who had just come in again, were appointed commissioners.
Instead of listening to cool and experienced advisers, they gave
themselves up to the priests and nobles who beset them, and who were
neither moderate nor enlightened.
The middling classes, who, from their habitual intercourse with the
lower orders, possess so great an influence over the body of the
people, were considered by the commissioners as a rabble multitude of
upstart "_roturiers_." They treated the middling class with disdain
and contempt. Deceived by the recollection of the excesses of the
revolution, they fancied, that whoever could win the populace, became
the ruler of the country. When money is not to be had, the surest way
of getting over the multitude, is by appealing to its passions. They
therefore announced, that they were sent to do justice to the people,
to listen to their complaints, to reform abuses, and to abolish the
"_droits reunis_," and the conscription.
Meetings were announced in the villages and in the country towns. All
persons of respectability kept away; but the populace, who are always
delighted with uproar and novelty, crowded in. There was no end to the
preposterous charges which were preferred against the magistrates, the
prefects, the under-prefects, the mayors, the administrators of
public affairs, the officers of revenue; in short, none of the
depositaries of public authority were spared.
Instead of despising such accusations, or submitting them to an
impartial inquiry, the commissioners hailed the popular clamour with
transport. They triumphed in the tumult; they were overflowing with
happiness at the fancied success of their efforts; they continued
exclaiming with increasing joy, "that is right, Good People; the King
is your father; these fellows are nothing but _canaille_; upon our
word of honour, we will kick them out."
These promises were kept. The public officers and functionaries of all
classes were gradually dismissed, and their places given to informers,
or to the old nobility. As the common people cooled, they became
undeceived, and it was found that they had gained neither in riches
nor in loyalty. The commissioners, instead of adding as they expected
to the popularity of the government, only helped to cry it down. The
cause of royalty was compromised by the scenes of riot which they
encouraged, and they degraded it by acts of injustice and oppression.
The non-emigrant commissioners acted far otherwise. They knew how to
value the lying declamations of the nobles, and of the mob whom the
nobles had set on. From the different conduct pursued by each party,
effects resulted which exhibited the most striking contrast. In one
department the public functionaries retained their situations, in
another they were disgraced and vituperated.
These scandalous proceedings excited the general indignation of the
country. The government was universally blamed. The important task of
instituting inquiries, which were to affect the honour and the civil
existence of the most respectable characters, had been entrusted to
emigrants who had lived amongst strangers during the best part of
their lives. And these men, who knew nothing of the forms, the
principles, or even the faults of the imperial government, were
consequently wholly unable to appreciate the conduct, whether
praiseworthy or blameable, of the depositaries of public authority.
The people discovered that they had been cheated, and that this
measure, disguised by specious representations, was in truth adopted
only for the purpose of more effectually displacing the old
functionaries of the nation. And, lastly, it was evident that this
general dismission would carry off those authorities who were the
natural guardians of every individual who had taken a part in the
revolution. And that all who were thus affected would be placed
beneath the sway of their sworn enemies, the nobles, the priests, and
their adherents.
Indications were given by the government that a "purification" of the
courts of justice was in contemplation; and the public apprehension
increased. The independence and immovability of the judges had been
guaranteed to the nation, and this guarantee was certainly the most
valuable of the rights which we had gained. But on account of its
importance, the government were the more desirous of violating it.
When the proposed "purification" became known, our national
magistrates trembled in their chairs, and they foresaw that they would
be plucked out for the purpose of making way for the antiquated
survivors of the courts of parliament.
The nation was alarmed, and protested against the measure. But the
"purification" was not to be stopped in its swoop. The process began
in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the Court of Cassation. And,
to remove all doubts respecting the ulterior object of the government,
it was officially announced that the _elimination_, disguised under
the name of the "installation royale," had been deferred only for the
purpose of "obtaining the information which was necessary to direct or
decide the choice of the judges, and that it would take place
successively in all the courts and tribunals of the kingdom."
The "installation" was felt to be not only a breach of faith, but an
open conspiracy against the security of the person and property of the
subject. We knew that the tribunals would now be filled with
magistrates whose prejudices, principles, and interest, must be in
perpetual hostility against our national laws, and that the new men
would seek to elude or crush our juridical system. The royal
magistrates, as it was but too evident, would be the relations, the
friends, or the creatures of the nobility, the emigrants, and of all
who claimed to be restored to their rights and privileges. Nor could
we hope that judges so constituted would deal out impartial justice
between the ci-devant privileged tribes, whom they would naturally
consider as the victims of revolutionary principles, and the children
of the revolution, who, according to the same mode of reasoning, they
could not fail to consider as the oppressors and robbers of the
privileged tribes.
The owners of national property were most alarmed by the approaching
expulsion of the revolutionary judges. By the charter, the
inviolability of their property had been guaranteed to them. But they
had not forgotten that a violent debate arose on the "redaction" of
this article; and that the ministers had been already accused on
account of the obscurity of the clause, which they refused to correct
into such words as might prevent all future quibbling and special
pleading.
If the emigrants, the priesthood, and the nobility, did not scruple to
express their hopes aloud that the sales of the national domains might
be declared null and void, it was equally well known to the public
that certain Great Personages entertained the same hopes in secret.
Doubts respecting the legality, and, consequently, of the validity of
the sales, were expressed in the ministerial journals; and various
publications were industriously disseminated, in which the purchases
were directly impugned. The authors of these works were favoured and
protected[10]; and it was whispered that the Great Personages, to
whom we have already alluded, had deliberated on the means of
realizing their hopes. All these tokens of the times united in giving
too reasonable a ground for the apprehensions entertained by the
proprietors of the confiscated lands; and the disorganization of the
tribunals was considered as a national calamity.
[Footnote 10: M.M. David and Falconnet. In order to
appease the public indignation, a summons was
issued against these writers, it being stated in
the process that they had endeavoured to excite
civil war. There was no difficulty in guessing that
this proceeding was a farce, and that by
overcharging the crime it was the intention of the
government to favour the acquittal of the accused;
and accordingly they were acquitted.]
It is calculated that the individuals who are interested directly or
indirectly either in the purchases of the national domains, or in the
rights and liabilities arising out of them, amount in number to
somewhat between nine and ten millions.
An opportunity offered itself when all the uneasiness felt by this
integral portion of the population of France might have been removed.
It was when the law; by which the emigrants recovered possession of
such part of their property as had not been alienated, came under
consideration. It was natural to suppose that the administration would
take advantage of the capability of the proceeding, in order to revive
the confidence of the public, and to renew the guarantee of the
charter. Such was not their conduct. On the contrary, M. Ferrand, the
government orator, one of the men who did most mischief to the King
and the kingdom, abandoned himself--we borrow the expression of the
reporter of the committee--to all the acrimony of his passions, and
all the profligacy of his principles. His fury could only be equalled
by his folly. He did not scruple to maintain, in the midst of the
representatives of the nation, that the emigrants had the greatest
right to claim the justice and favour of the royal government, because
they alone had not wandered from the righteous path. And starting with
this position, he represented the forfeiture and sale of their
property, not as the justifiable acts of a legislative body, but as
revolutionary outrages and robberies which the nation ought to hasten
to make good.
The Chamber of Deputies passed their censure upon the inflammatory
doctrines and language of the royalist orator, and expunged the word
"restitution" from the law. It had not been inserted without design,
for "restitution" supposes a previous robbery, and the emigrants had
not been robbed of the property: it had been confiscated by virtue of
a law sanctioned by the King; and which law was only a new application
of the system of confiscation created and followed up by the King's
predecessors.
Without travelling into more remote periods, we may ask if it was not
with the spoils of the victims who had been sacrificed to the
murderous policy of Richelieu, and the religious intolerance of Louis
XIV., that the first families had been enriched? And who can tell
whether the lands which the emigrants reclaimed with so much pride and
bitterness, were not the same which their ancestors had received
without a blush from the bloody hands of Richelieu and Louis?
It must be confessed that the unalterable fidelity of a certain number
amongst the emigrants bound the royal government to reward their
fidelity and to alleviate their misfortunes. But all had not an equal
right to the affection and gratitude of the King. If some had
generously sacrificed their fortunes and their country in the cause of
royalty, yet others only fled from France because they wished to
escape their creditors[11], and thought that in strange countries they
might find dupes to feed upon, and thus exist upon swindling resources
to which they could no longer resort with impunity at home.
[Footnote 11: Before the revolution it was
customary for "_les grands seigneurs_" to obtain
what were called "_lettres de surseance_," by means
of which they avoided the payment of their debts,
and defeated their creditors.]
It was therefore necessary to separate the first class of emigrants
from the last; and after establishing this distinction, the government
should have made a fair appeal to the justice and generosity of the
nation. Frenchmen, who yield so readily to every dignified sentiment,
would not have allowed the faithful and virtuous servants of their
King to languish in poverty. We may appeal to the universal assent
which was given to the proposal[12] made by the marshal duke of
Tarentum, that ten millions of francs should be annually appropriated
for the indemnification of the emigrants who had been deprived of
their property, and of the soldiers who had lost their "_dotations_."
[Footnote 12: This proposal was not carried into
execution.]
But the government party should not have attempted to assist the
emigrants by resorting to means offensive to the nation, and
derogatory to the charter. And, above all, they should not have puffed
up the emigrants with proud and silly hopes. If they had been left to
themselves, they would have fallen in with the purchasers of their
property, they would have treated for an amicable settlement of their
claims, and they would have regained possession of their hereditary
estates without jarring and without scandal.
The partiality which was shown towards the emigrants on all occasions
produced another evil of still greater extent. It contributed, even
more than the efforts of disaffection, in persuading the peasantry
that the government wished to chain them again to the soil, and to
render them once more the tributaries both of the nobility and of the
priesthood.
The revolution has taught the countryman to know that he is somebody
in the state. After the revolution the peasants became rich, and they
were delivered from the double vassalage of former days, when they
crouched before the priest and the lord: therefore they could not
think of any alteration without horror. Day after day they heard or
they read (in France every body reads now,) that the government
intended to restore the "_ancien regime_." And the restoration of the
"_ancien regime_" was interpreted by them, as well as by many others,
to mean the restoration of tithes, vassalage, and feudal rights. They
were confirmed in their dangerous and disquieting opinion by the
outrageous claims of the emigrants, and the declamations of the
priests. It was to no purpose that the government tried to re-assure
them. They had been already deceived and it seldom happens that you
can catch a French peasant twice in the same snare. The abolition of
the conscription had been promised, and the old code was continued in
force with all its harshness, and still the refractory conscripts were
sent away in chains, whilst fines were imposed upon their families.
The abolition of the "_droits reunis_" had also been promised, and
they were not only levied with greater rigour and harshness than
before, but even some of these imposts had been greatly increased.
Such was the fatality which influenced all the actions of the
government, that all proceedings which in themselves were simple and
reasonable, became venomous and corrupted when conducted by the
ministry, and only added to the general disorder and discontent,
instead of producing the good effects which they might have been
justly expected to produce.
The discontent of the people, the inevitable result of the injuries
inflicted on the feelings and interests of individuals[13], was
increased by the open infringement of the rights of the people,
although these rights were secured to the country by a compact which
seemed to be inviolable.
[Footnote 13: There are times when a government may
attack general principles without danger. But men
and their personal interests can never be assailed
with impunity. Personal interest is the prime mover
of public opinion and feeling; and however
degrading the truth may appear, it is not to be
disputed. After a great national catastrophe this
baleful egotism is particularly evident. Dignified
passions become extinct for want of fuel; and the
human mind, destitute of external occupation, works
inward upon itself, and begets selfishness, the
true pestilence of the soul. When this disease
affects a nation, the government is lost if it
attacks the interests of individuals.]
Liberty of conscience had been promised by the charter, and this
liberty was immediately annihilated. An ordonnance was issued by the
police[14], which revived regulations enacted in _an age of
intolerance_, for enforcing the strict and universal observance of the
Lord's day, and the festivals of the church. Napoleon, anxious to
preserve a strict neutrality between the catholics and the
protestants, prohibited the religious processions of the former in all
towns containing places of worship belonging to the latter communion.
His prohibition was removed, and the catholic priesthood exulted in
their processions, in which they marched in triumph. They ought to
have tranquillized the apprehensions of their opponents, and to have
edified the faithful by humility, or at least by feigning humility;
but they disdained to conciliate the public, whom they scandalized by
their pride and irritated by their violence[15].
[Footnote 14: By means of ordonnances the ministers
legislated according to their pleasure in matters
which ought only to have been regulated by the law,
so that the greater part of the bills presented to
the chambers "had been already enacted and executed
in the shape of ordonnances; and the legislature
had no other function except that of giving a legal
sanction to the arbitrary decrees of the
ministers."--_Censeur._]
[Footnote 15: Even in Paris several persons were
ill treated and bayoneted, because they refused to
pull off their hats and kneel, whilst the
processions were passing by.]
The imagination of the priests became fired by the victory which they
supposed they had gained. They dreamt that they were in full
possession of their ancient power; and they wished immediately to
revive it according to their ancient fashion. An actress belonging to
the Theatre Francais died without being absolved, and without
suspecting that it was necessary to be absolved, from the
excommunication which had been formerly fulminated against stage
players; and which, as every body knows, deprived Moliere of Christian
burial.
Following the same precedents, the clergy would not allow the rites of
sepulture to the actress in question. The populace, who followed the
funeral out of curiosity, learnt the affront which was thus offered to
her remains. Transported by sudden indignation, they rushed to the
hearse, and dragged it onwards. The doors of the interdicted church
were burst open in a moment. They called for a priest; no priest
appeared. The tumult augmented. The church and the neighbouring
streets resounded with the groans and threats of ten thousand persons.
Their agitation became more violent, and there was no possibility of
foreseeing where the effervescence of popular feeling would stop, when
a messenger arrived from the court, who ordered, in the name of the
King, that the funeral should proceed.
The accounts of this event, and the comments to which it gave rise,
excited the most lively interest in Paris and throughout France: nor
did it fail to give the greatest pleasure to the enemies of religion.
The friends of public decency and good order accused the government of
encouraging the alarming progress of sacerdotal despotism. It was
particularly in the smaller towns, and in the country, that the
priests behaved with the most blamable audacity, abusing the privilege
of speech which had been restored to them[16]. The pulpit became a
tribunal from whence they pronounced sentence of present infamy, with
the reversion of eternal damnation, upon all who refused to
participate in their opinions and bigotry. Making common cause with
the emigrants, they employed hints, inuendoes, insinuations,
arguments, promises, and threats of every species, for the purpose of
compelling the owners of the national property to yield up their
lands, and of leading the wretched peasantry again beneath the tyrant
yokes of feudality and superstition.
[Footnote 16: Under the reign of Napoleon, if a
priest had ventured to utter any opinion contrary
to the system of government, he would have been
immediately removed.]
During the revolution, the priesthood had betrayed its real character.
Contempt had fallen on the clergy, and it was out of the power of the
government to invest them suddenly with the salutary influence which
they had lost. This influence ought to be gained by wise and prudent
conduct, by active and impartial benevolence, by the practice of
sacerdotal virtues. It cannot be gained by ordonnances of police, by
abuse, by violence, by mumming processions, which, in our times, are
out of character and ridiculous.
By the charter the liberty of the press had been guarantied as well as
the liberty of public worship; yet every day innumerable publications
were seized or suppressed contrary to the laws. M. Durbach, a deputy
who never equivocated with his conscience or yielded to danger,
complained on this subject in the chamber: the opinion of the house
went along with him; and the government, pretending to yield to the
feeling of the deputies, presented a bill to the chambers through the
medium of M. de Montesquiou, which, instead of delivering the press
from its slavery, gave full establishment to the censorship, and
legalized the tyranny which had been exercised over the press by mere
force under the former government.
Benjamin Constant attacked the bill with vigour: the same side was
taken by the public journals, and by all public writers; but there was
no possibility of putting M. de Montesquiou out of countenance. It was
demonstrated to him that his law would wholly destroy the liberty of
the press. By holding the charter before his eyes, the advocates of
public rights proved that the charter only declared that the licence
of the press was to be restrained, and that his bill was therefore
radically unconstitutional, because the preliminary censorship was not
intended to restrain abuses, but to prevent their taking place.
Montesquiou answered gravely, that the persons with whom such
objections originated did not understand French; that the words
"_prevenir_" and "_reprimer_" were perfectly synonymous: and that the
bill, instead of being offensive or unconstitutional, contained a most
complete and a most liberal development of the clause in the charter.
This unparalleled endeavour of Montesquiou, who persuaded himself that
he could convince an assembly of Frenchmen that they did not
understand their own language, was justly considered by the chamber as
a matchless specimen of impudence and folly. Lexicographical
subtleties were employed with bitter mockery for the purpose of
destroying a public right, consecrated by the constitutional compact.
Never had insolence and bad faith been displayed so prominently:
Raynouard, the reporter of the committee, exclaimed in the language of
grief and indignation, "Minister of our King, confess, at least, that
your law is contrary to the constitution, since you cannot refute the
evidence adduced against it: your obstinacy in contesting such an
indisputable truth would not then inspire us with such just alarms."
The law was ultimately adopted by both chambers; ministerial influence
triumphed over reason, and rased the most important bulwark of the
rights guarantied to the nation. The result of the conflict produced
the most lively sensation. No man who was capable of forethought and
reasoning could remain undisturbed. Notwithstanding the patriotism of
Dupont (of the department of the Eure), of Raynouard, of Durbach, of
Bedoch, of Flaugergues, it was seen too clearly that the chamber of
deputies could not oppose any effectual obstacle to the despotic and
anti-constitutional plans of the government; and that the ministers
would have full power, whenever they thought proper, to interpret the
clauses of the charter according to their own way, and to rob the
French nation of the few rights which it yet might promise to them.
"By means of such interpretations," the people said, "the senate
sacrificed the independence of the nation to Napoleon. But at least
the imperial despotism assumed a character by which it was justified
and ennobled. It tended to render our nation the greatest nation in
the world; but the despotism which awaits us has no other
accompaniment but bad faith, and no other end except the degradation
and slavery of France."
By such reflections, the suspicion and disgust and aversion inspired
by the government, were excited to the utmost pitch. The public
feeling did not stop there: the French people are naturally inconstant
in their opinions and sentiments; and their former prejudices against
Napoleon were changed into transports of admiration. France, under the
royal government, was humiliated, disorganized, and degenerate; and
they contrasted the present state of the country with the influence,
the strength, the compactness, which it enjoyed under the reign of
Napoleon; and He, who had lately been cursed as the root of all evil,
now appeared to be the greatest of men, and the greatest of heroes,
though in misfortune.
The government knew that Napoleon was again admired by the people, and
that they regretted his loss. To counteract these sentiments, coarse
and vulgar caricatures were exposed to the eyes of the populace; and
his person and his character became the theme of false and scandalous
libels published under the direction of the ministry. No effect was
produced. The mob looked at the caricatures with a smile of contempt;
and the actions of Napoleon, which, under his reign, excited the
greatest censure and disapprobation, now found the most zealous
apologists and defenders.
If Napoleon was accused of having overthrown the republican
government, and enslaved the country by the revolution of the 18th
Brumaire, they answered[17]:--"At that era, anarchy, emboldened by the
misfortunes of the country, could only be repressed by victory. Civil
war had been organized in twenty departments; insurrections had taken
place in many, rapine infected them all; robbery and murder took place
with impunity on many of the principal high roads. Two dreadful laws,
the law of the hostages, and that of the forced loans, occasioned
greater evils than they could cure. No nation had ever existed in
which the finances of the state were in equal confusion; and a
succession of partial bankruptcies prolonged the opprobrium of the
general bankruptcy of the country. The money of the public was robbed
whilst in transit on the high roads. Robbers even carried it off from
the houses of the receivers, and the deficiency could not be made good
by the most violent exactions. The jacobins were on the point of
recommencing their reign of terror. The royalists had recourse without
scruple to all the measures which might enable them to satiate their
revenge; and the peaceable friends of the law were placed between the
conflicting parties in a state of disgraceful weakness and neutrality.
Such was the desperate situation of France when Napoleon seized the
helm of the state. Instead of imputing the slavery of the country to
him, he ought to have been blessed; for he delivered us from the
spoliations, the murders, and the tyranny which were consequent upon
the reign of anarchy and terror."
[Footnote 17: I cannot express their thoughts more
forcibly than by copying the passage, which I have
quoted in my text, from the View of the Revolution
by Lacretelle.]
Was it maintained that Napoleon had reigned despotically? They held
that this accusation was unjust; and they had recourse to the
following reasoning. "Anarchy was silenced by Napoleon." It became
necessary, that order should take the place of disorder; that the
authority of one should be substituted for the authority of all.
Parties were to be restrained within the bound of moderation; traitors
were to be annihilated. It was necessary to curb the prejudices of the
nobility, and the revolutionary habits and manners of the jacobins.
This great work could not be accomplished, without engaging in a
conflict against individual interests and opinions. Napoleon was
considered as a despot; this was inevitable. Whenever the existing
polity of a state has been totally subverted, he who first raises the
edifice of society from its ruins, is necessarily accused of
despotism, because apparently he has no other rule except his own
will. Nor must we forget that Napoleon had been accustomed to command
implicit obedience in the camp. He retained his military attitude on
the throne. He usually addressed his courtiers, his connexions, and
his ministers, in the tone which he had formerly adopted when speaking
to his soldiers or their generals[18]. An appearance of despotism was
certainly given to his way of reigning and commanding, by such
language which is seldom heard in civil society. And in almost all
cases, appearance is taken for reality.
[Footnote 18: From his early youth, it may be even
said from his days of boyhood, Napoleon felt an
inward presentiment that he was not destined to
live in mediocrity. This persuasion soon taught him
to treat others with disdain, and to entertain the
highest opinion of himself. Scarcely had he
obtained a subaltern command in the artillery, when
he considered himself as the superior of his
equals, and the equal of his superiors. In his 20th
year he was placed at the head of the army of
Italy. Without appearing to be in the slightest
degree surprised by his elevation, he passed from a
secondary station to the chief command. He
immediately treated the old generals of the
army--they who were so proud of the laurels--with
an air of dignity and authority, which placed them
in a situation which was probably new to them. But
they did not feel humiliated, and their inferiority
seemed to result as a matter of course, for the
ascendancy exercised by Napoleon was irresistible;
and he was thoroughly endued; with that instinct of
authority, that talent of ensuring obedience, with
those faculties which are usually confined to those
who are kings by birth. Napoleon could probably
have attained to supreme authority in any country
in the world. Nature had formed him for command,
and she never creates such men for the purpose of
leaving them in obscurity. It seems, according to
the remark of a writer whose name I have forgotten,
that she is proud of her own work, and that she
wishes to offer it to admiration, by placing it at
the head of human society.]
At first the imperious tone adopted by Napoleon was blamed, next it
was admired. He soon employed it in his intercourse with foreign
ambassadors, with foreign sovereigns. The wily forms of ancient
diplomacy were discarded. Napoleon did not negociate; he issued his
orders. With one hand he brandished his victorious sword; in the other
he held crowns and sceptres. He bade the sovereigns of Europe make
their choice; he offered his friendship or his hatred, kingdoms or
blows. The monarchs who stood before his throne were taught wisdom by
experience. They knew that Napoleon could reward and punish; they
crowded into the ranks of his allies; and they consoled themselves for
their weakness, by crying out upon his tyranny[19].
[Footnote 19: The continental system induced
Napoleon to exercise a real tyranny over Europe. We
do not pretend to deny the fact; but we only wish
to add, that this exterior despotism always induced
a belief amongst foreigners, that Napoleon, who
tyrannized so violently over nations which did not
belong to him, must necessarily be the tyrant of
his own subjects.]
When these causes were united, they aided in persuading the world
that Napoleon was really a despot. For, as Montesquieu observes, there
are some things which we believe at last, merely because we hear them
continually repeated. But if the government of Napoleon is considered
impartially, we shall feel convinced, that the despotism attributed to
him existed rather in words and forms, than in deeds. Let the acts of
his reign be scrutinized, and none will be found impressed with the
character of real despotism; that is to say, of despotism founded on
the mere arbitrary will and pleasure of the prince. On the contrary,
they all prove that the interest and aggrandizement of France entered
alone into the views of Napoleon, and that instead of being under a
tyrannical government, the people never enjoyed the benefits of
distributive justice with greater equality, and were never protected
more completely against the oppressions of public functionaries, and
of the higher ranks. He may, perhaps, be censured for having violated
certain laws, for violations in which the senate and the
representatives of the people were his accomplices. But laws are only
binding upon sovereigns in the ordinary course of things, and the most
rigid writers on the law of nations acknowledge this principle. When
extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances take place, it is the duty
of the sovereign to be above the law. In order to judge fairly of the
actions of a monarch, we must not consider them separately. Many an
action which, if taken singly, appears unjustifiable or hateful, loses
that character when viewed as one of the series of events from which
it arose, as a connecting link in the political chain of which it
forms a part. Neither should the conduct of a sovereign be judged
according to the principles of natural equity. In the estimation of
those, upon whom the task of ruling nations has devolved, necessity
and the public safety ought to know no law. Every apprehension of
injuring private interest vanishes, and must ever vanish, before state
considerations.
"After all," continued they, "the real point at issue is, not whether
the government of Napoleon was more or less despotic; but whether it
was such as was required by the character of his people and of his
times,--such as it needed to be, in order that France might become
tranquil, happy, and powerful." Now it is impossible to deny but that,
during the reign of Napoleon, the interior of France enjoyed an
unruffled calm, and that the ascendancy of his genius bestowed upon
the country a degree of power and prosperity, which it never attained
before, and which probably it will never possess again.
Was the emperor taxed with boundless ambition? Were the calamities of
Spain and Russia laid to his charge?--his indefatigable apologists
found a ready answer.--The Spanish war, instead of being an unjust
aggression, was an enterprise guided by the soundest political talent.
It had been provoked by the wavering treachery of that allied
government, which, in spite of its engagements, was secretly
negociating with the English; and which, yielding to their
instigations, had endeavoured to take advantage of our difficulties
and of the absence of our armies, in order to invade our territory,
and to become a sharer in the plots of our enemies.
The detention of Ferdinand ceased to be an odious breach of faith. It
resulted necessarily from his duplicity, his parricidal projects, and
his English connexions. The nomination of Joseph as King of Spain and
the Indies, had been universally attributed to the excessive vanity of
Napoleon, who, as it was supposed, was determined to drop a crown upon
the head of every member of the imperial family. But now opinion
changed. King Joseph's promotion was felt to have been caused by the
necessity of placing Spain for ever out of the reach of English
influence. Had not Napoleon allowed the Cortes of Spain to elect their
monarch of their own uncontrolled authority? Had he not said to them
in public, "Dispose of the throne. Little do I care whether the king
of Spain is called Ferdinand, or whether he is called Joseph; let him
only be the ally of France, and the enemy of England[20]?"
[Footnote 20: The Emperor thus addressed the
Spanish Cortes; when assembled at Bayonne.]
It was still more easy to justify the Russian war. A Quixotic love of
the marvellous was no longer supposed to be the passion which excited
it. In making war against Russia, he was actuated by the desire of
avenging the injuries which that power had occasioned to France, at
the moment when the Russian government again opened its ports to the
English, thus snatching from the nation the reward of the sacrifices
which we had made for the establishment and consolidation of the
continental blockade,--of that universal barrier which made England
and her thousand vessels tremble!
The invasion of Germany was no longer the effect of Napoleon's
insatiate thirst of power and glory[21]. It was seen, that there was
no other sure method, by which the English, the irreconcilable
enemies of France, could be deprived of their fatal continental
influence, by which they could be compelled to abandon the empire of
the seas. In short, Napoleon was only inflicting a salutary and
equitable punishment, deserved by those sovereigns of all sizes. After
having implored or obtained the alliance of Napoleon, and after having
ratified the bond by engagements and promises upon which he generously
relied, they compelled him to take up arms, in order to prevent them
from receiving the agents of England into their cabinets, and her
merchandizes into their ports.
[Footnote 21: Napoleon was accused of having
aspired to universal monarchy. In all ages, this
desire has been imputed to powerful and ambitious
sovereigns. Let us confess that no monarch was ever
better justified in yielding to the seductions of
this brilliant phantom than Napoleon. From the
summit of his throne he held the reins which guided
the greater part of Europe, whose docile monarchs
instantly obeyed any direction which he chose to
give them. At the first word, at the slightest
signal, their subjects were arrayed beneath the
imperial eagle. Their continual intercourse with
us, the obligation of obeying Napoleon, an
obligation imposed upon them by their own princes,
had accustomed them to consider the Emperor as
their chieftain. But whatever ambition may have
been attributed to Napoleon, his good sense
restrained him from aspiring to universal monarchy.
He had another plan; he intended to re-establish
the eastern and western empires. It would now be
useless to reveal the lofty and powerful
considerations by which this grand and noble idea
was suggested to Napoleon. Then, France might have
been allowed to grasp again the sceptre of
Charlemagne: but now, we must forget that we have
been the masters of the world.]
Thus the partisans of Napoleon invented arguments by which they
palliated his faults and justified his errors. No objection, no
reproach was left without its answer. After defending him against his
accusers they became his advocates; and, turning to the fairer pages
of his history, their praises knew no bounds; these eulogiums were
certainly more just, and, perhaps, more sincere.
"Napoleon," said they, "had all the great qualities of the greatest
monarchs, whilst he was exempted from their vices. Napoleon was not
stained by the lechery of Caesar, nor by the drunkenness of Alexander,
nor by the cruelty of Charlemagne."
At an age when others scarcely start in life, his years were
outnumbered by his victories; and the kings of Europe, conquered by
his sword or subjugated by his genius, cowered before the imperial
eagle.
In France, when aggrandized by the conquests of Napoleon, the empire
of ancient Rome was re-produced before the astonished world. The
French name, tarnished by the crimes of the revolution, regained its
ancient honour and its mastery. The nation was feared, admired, and
respected by the entire universe.
Philosophy graced Napoleon no less than warlike prowess. After he had
covered the nation with glory by his victories, he was willing to
insure our welfare by his laws. He bestowed upon us that immortal code
of jurisprudence which invested him with the title of the legislator
of France, a title to which our former kings had aspired in vain. He
organised that admirable system of finance and administration, which
their subjects, groaning under misrule, implored but without effect.
Still he had not accomplished enough to satisfy his noble and
beneficent ardour. Arts, sciences, and industry were to flourish in
our country. The munificent aids[22] which were granted by Napoleon,
created the thousands and thousands of manufactories from whence
proceeded those finished works of skill and labour which became the
pride of the French, and the despair and ruin of foreign nations. The
sons of Apollo[23], on whom he lavished his gifts and favours, seized
the crayon, the compass, and the chisel. Paris became a second
Athens, when adorned by the wonders of art to which his munificence
gave birth. We then saw the venerable Louvre rise, as by enchantment,
from its deserted ruins; the palaces of our Kings became more
gorgeous; the temples of the arts were enriched by productions which
rivalled the relics of antiquity; our native land brought forth those
establishments so proudly useful to the public, and those monuments
destined to transmit the recollections of our fame and glory to the
most distant posterity.
[Footnote 22: Neither the nature nor the extent of
these aids has been well understood out of France.
Napoleon revived our industry by the loans, which
he never hesitated to grant to any enterprising
manufacturer who needed capital; and this
assistance was always liberal and well-timed.]
[Footnote 23: Louis XIV., who has been so much
praised for his liberality, only distributed 52,300
francs per annum to the literati and artists of
France, and 14,000 francs to foreigners.]
At the same moment his sovereign will guided the hands which curbed
the waves of the ocean, and caused them to roll over a new abyss. He
directed those labours which substituted wide harbours, superb
dock-yards, and fertilizing canals, in the place of desert shores and
pestilential marshes, restoring commerce and existence to the
innumerable inhabitants of the sea coast, and of the banks of the
Scheld and the Somme. At the same moment his voice created those Roman
highways, branching through all parts of France, and Germany, and
Italy, equally useful and majestic, and which afforded to the
inhabitants of those countries means equally speedy and secure of
communicating with each other, and of exchanging the products of their
industry: and never will the friend or even the enemy of Napoleon
cross the summits of the Alps, or ascend their craggy sides, without
venerating the magnanimous sovereign, who, anxious to guide the steps
and protect the life of the traveller, has enclosed the precipice,
chained the torrent, and linked the great mountains of the earth,
which during so many ages have braved the might of man and time. When
future ages shall gather up in memory the glorious and transcendent
deeds of Napoleon; when they shall number the blessings which he
dispensed, and the victories which he gained, never will they believe
that one man can have worked such miracles in so short a period. They
will rather fancy that the historian was playing with the credulity of
posterity, that he culled out all the great deeds performed by
successive generations of the greatest men during an infinite series
of ages, and that he has attributed them all to his ideal hero.
The soldiers who had bled beneath the banners of Napoleon would not
listen in silence to the praises which others bestowed upon his name.
His foreign conquests, which even they had lately considered as the
causes of our misfortunes, became again the sources of inexhaustible
admiration.
They recollected that Napoleon had ruled as the master of Madrid, of
Lisbon, of Munich, of Warsaw, of Hamburgh, of Berlin, of Vienna, of
Milan, of Amsterdam, of Rome, of Moscow, of Cairo.
Some recalled the memory of the day of Lodi. They saw him standing on
the bridge re-animating his dispirited followers, defying danger and
death whilst he waved the national flag, and drove the enemy from
their entrenchments, and blasted their glory. Others pointed him out
whilst crossing the perpetual snows and yawning chasms of Mount St.
Bernard, and then victorious on the plains of Marengo, where he won
that battle which insured the peace and glory of the country.
Austerlitz had its chroniclers, who described Napoleon as he fell with
the rapidity and violence of the thunderbolt on the battalions of the
Austrian and the Russian, and when he afforded to those trembling
monarchs an example of magnanimity which they knew not how to imitate
when generosity became their duty. Nor did his enthusiastic advocates
omit the field of Jena, where his victorious ensigns chased the flying
troops of Frederic, who, deceived by their recollections, yet held
themselves to be the paragons of military worth. They retraced his
paths amidst the burning sands of Egypt, amidst the icy wastes of
Muscovy; and in either region Napoleon supported fire and frost
without ostentation, and taught resignation and endurance to his
soldiers by his unshaken constancy.
More recent and more painful victories contributed equally to endear
him. They saw Napoleon in Champagne, when his veteran army scarcely
equalled one of the numerous divisions of the enemy. At the head of
his scanty troops he watched, and avoided, and surprised the
Austrians, the Russians, and the Prussians: wounding them on all sides
by his victorious weapons, and with such promptitude, that he seemed
to have bestowed wings upon iron and death. They placed him at Arcis
sur Aube, advancing before his squadrons, and rushing forward to meet
the balls and bullets of the enemy; for he sought to sacrifice on the
field of battle that life, which he foresaw he could no longer
dedicate on the throne, to the glory and prosperity of the nation.
In short, generals, officers, and soldiers, all vied with each other
in calling to mind the marches, the sieges, the conflicts, the
attacks, the days, which had immortalized their general[24]; and is
there a heart amongst us which does not beat higher at these
recollections?
[Footnote 24: The soldiers identified the name of
Napoleon with their country and their honour. When
the accession of Louis XVIII. put an end to the
sufferings and captivity of those who were
imprisoned in England, they returned to France,
cursing the cause of their liberty, and exclaiming,
"Vive l'Empereur!" Even in the deserts of Russia,
neither threats of ill treatment, nor promises of
assistance offered to the French prisoners at the
moment when they were starving, could extort a
single complaint against Napoleon.]
The sentiments thus awakening in favour of Napoleon were cherished by
his friends, and by all those who, wearied of the Bourbons or
discontented with their government, now wished for his return. His
name, which lately we had scarcely dared to utter, was now in every
mouth, his image in every mind. The nation began to regret the
Emperor, then they longed for him; and every one was impressed by a
secret presentiment that these expectations would soon be realized.
Whilst this formidable revulsion of opinion was increasing and
appearing throughout the kingdom, it was scarcely heeded by the
ministry, the court, and the emigrants, who reposed with complacent
security on the volcano which they had kindled, and without
entertaining the slightest apprehension of the approaching explosion.
"If they wish to go out of the kingdom," said M. de Chateaubriand,
when alluding to the partisans of the Emperor, "if they wish to return
again, to receive or despatch letters, to send expresses, to make
proposals, to circulate false intelligence, and even to distribute
bribes, to assemble in secret or in public, to menace, to disseminate
libels, in short, to conspire against the government,--they are at
liberty to do their worst. The royal government, which began but eight
months ago, now rests upon so sure a basis, that, were it now to be
obstinate in repeating folly after folly, it would hold good in spite
of all its errors."
This infatuation, however, soon diminished. Without understanding the
full extent of the evil, the government ascertained that the army and
the nation were agitated and discontented, and they deliberated on the
methods which it would be proper to employ, not for the purpose of
conciliation, but for enforcing silence.
Acquainted with the uneasiness of the government, certain frantic
Chouans gave out that it was full time to despatch the Bonapartists.
One chieftain, celebrated in the annals of La Vendee, was even so
audacious as to declare to general Ex..... that he only waited for the
arrival of his faithful Vendeans, and then he would fall upon the
Jacobins.
The news of this massacre soon reached the ears of the intended
victims. Some quitted Paris, others armed themselves, and prepared to
sell their lives as dearly as they could. It is said that the
government became acquainted with the bloody conspiracy of the
Chouans, and that they relieved France and the world from the
spectacle of another St. Bartholomew's day.
This intended massacre (I have never been able to believe in it,)
persuaded the revolutionists that they could expect neither respite
nor mercy from the royalists, and that one of the two parties would be
compelled to destroy the other. The soldiers of Napoleon began to
unite, and to make themselves ready. The ministers were anxious to
disperse these assemblages, which gave them uneasiness; orders were
issued, by which all officers, whether of the staff or regimental,
were prohibited from residing at Paris without permission; and all who
were not Parisians by birth were ordered to return to their native
provinces. This measure increased the exasperation of the military,
and it did not diminish the danger. The reduced officers, instead of
conforming to the order, encouraged each other in disobedience.
According to the regulations of the war department, their contumacious
residence at Paris would subject them to the loss of their half-pay;
and many of them, though in poverty, preferred independence to
submission. The ministers were irritated by this resistance, and they
determined to make an example. It happened that a letter of
congratulation which General Excelmans addressed to his former
sovereign, the king of Naples, was intercepted. This opportunity was
gladly seized by the new Minister at war[25]. He put the General on
the half-pay list, and ordered him to retire immediately, and until
further orders, to the distance of sixty leagues from Paris. Excelmans
maintained that the Minister at war had no right to remove an officer,
not being in active service, from his domicile; and he would not go:
upon this he was immediately taken into custody. It was pretended that
he had been guilty of a traitorous intercourse with the enemies of the
King, and that he was also guilty of disobedience to his Majesty's
orders. The government expected that this blow would produce the best
possible effect; but it recoiled against them: Excelmans was known to
all France; he was valued as one of her bravest and most estimable
children. The spite and hatred of the ministers had loaded him with
accusations; but his alleged treasons, far from depriving him of
public esteem and public affection, only endeared him to his
companions in arms, and to the nation at large.
[Footnote 25: Marshal Soult had just succeeded
General Dupont.]
Excelmans was brought to trial, and the court acquitted him[26]. The
council of war, by sanctioning the disobedience of the General,
declared that the government did not possess that authority over
reduced officers which they had assumed; and from this moment the
government was ruined. The decision by which the half-pay military
were enfranchised, and which left them at liberty to brave the
commands of the government, was a shock which beat the royal authority
to the ground.
[Footnote 26: M. Comte, one of the acute and
courageous editors of the Censor, was chosen by the
general as his "counsel." General Fressinet was his
advocate. (According to the forms of the French
courts of judicature, the counsel assists by his
advice, the advocate pleads.) This officer, equally
distinguished by his firmness, his talents, and his
bravery, was afterwards punished and exiled on
account of the generous assistance which he gave on
this important occasion to General Excelmans, his
fellow soldier and friend.]
Here I shall stop. It would be of no further use to lengthen the
history and the investigation of the absurd tyranny of the government.
If we trace the progress of the principles successively enounced by
the ministry, and the actions of which they were the authors, we shall
see that they had formed and executed the project of re-establishing
the old monarchy, and of overturning the constitutional government
either by artifice or by main force. The royal charter was spurned by
them, and they trampled without scruple on the civil and political
rights which it consecrated. Every guarantee given to the army, the
magistracy, the public functionaries, or the nation, was forgotten,
attacked, or violated. Our national glory was insulted; public feeling
was wounded. The manners and customs and opinions of the new era were
all treated with harshness: all ranks and classes of citizens
experienced those vexations which filled them with discontent. By
injustice and bad faith the government deprived the King of our
confidence and love, and caused the restoration of the Emperor to
become the hope of the nation. In spite of the obstacles experienced
by the ministry, in spite of the affronts to which they had been
subjected, in spite of the retrograde steps which they had been
compelled to take, they still clung to the baneful system which they
had fostered; and, bigoted to these plans, they continued to persevere
in those errors which recalled Napoleon from his exile, just as
Napoleon persevered in the errors which recalled the Bourbons back
from theirs.
But whilst the storm was gathering in France, how was Napoleon
employed? Ambition had taken flight, and he was seen to prefer a life
of unostentatious retirement to all his former grandeurs. Repose had
greater charms for him than the noble turmoil of war; and his genius,
no longer teeming with meditation, yielded to the pleasures of
retirement. The study of botany, the cares of his household, the
plantations which he had made, and those which he was still planning,
beguiled his hours[27]; and, like the Roman Diocletian, he might have
said to those who suspected that he longed in secret after the throne,
"Come and see me in my retirement: I will show you the gardens which I
have planted, and you will talk no more to me about the empire."
[Footnote 27: It has been alleged, but without
foundation, that he retained his taste for military
exercises. Not one review took place during his
residence at Porto Ferrajo; arms seemed to have no
attractions for him.]
Napoleon, during the early part of his retirement in Elba, felt only a
vague desire of reigning. Grieved by the miseries of France, the
country which he loved so truly, wearied by the vicissitudes of
fortune, disgusted with mankind, he feared that, if he attempted to
seize the sceptre again, he should involve France and himself in new
troubles; and, without abandoning his expectation of re-ascending the
throne, he resolved to allow his resolutions to be guided by futurity.
The turn taken by public affairs soon roused the Emperor from this
state of indifference and hesitation. At first he hoped, and I have
heard him say so, that the Bourbons, instructed by adversity, would
confer liberty and happiness upon the nation. But when he witnessed
the power which was bestowed upon the priesthood, the emigrants, and
the courtiers, he foresaw that the very same causes which had produced
the first revolution, would soon occasion a second. From that period
he watched the continent; nor did he lose sight, even for a moment, of
the congress, or of France, or of the Bourbons. He could tell the
talents[28], the principles, the vices, and the virtues of all those
who had acquired the confidence of Louis XVIII, either by intrusion or
by favour. He could measure the degrees of influence which each was
capable of acquiring and exercising, and he calculated beforehand on
the errors which they would inevitably induce his docile successor to
commit.
[Footnote 28: It is well known that there was not a
single individual of note in the service, either of
his allies or of his enemies, whose strong and weak
points were not perfectly understood by Napoleon.]
Napoleon now employed himself again in reading the public journals of
France and of foreign countries; he read assiduously all periodical
works of a political tendency; he studied these productions; he
investigated them with acuteness, and he could well divine the meaning
of a writer who was compelled to be silent, and conjecture the nature
of intelligence which an editor was forced to suppress.
Strangers of distinction, and particularly the English, were received
by Napoleon with affability and kindness, and he used to talk freely
with his visitors on public affairs. He knew how to draw them out, and
to lead them to expatiate on points which he wished to penetrate; and
he seldom failed to obtain much useful information from those
interviews. By these simple methods Napoleon obtained a correct idea
of the events which were taking place on the continent; he was too
well acquainted with revolutions not to be sensible that the sway of
events would open the gates of France, and admit him; and he was too
wary to enter into a private correspondence with his partisans, when
any accident might have revealed his secret wishes, and have afforded
a pretext to his enemies for attacking his independence and his
liberty.
Napoleon thus waited in silence till the fated time of his
re-appearance in France should arrive, when a French Officer[29],
disguised as a sailor, disembarked at Porto Ferrajo.
[Footnote 29: This officer is the person who is
named in the declaration made on the 15th of March
to the prince of Essling, then governor of the 8th
military division, by Monsieur P*****, who landed
with Napoleon from the Isle of Elba, and was
arrested at Toulon by order of the prefect of the
department of the Var.]
Some few days before this Officer set out to join the army in the year
1815, he gave over to me the manuscript narrative of his voyage to the
Isle of Elba. "To you," added he, "I deliver my history, which is also
that of the revolution of the 20th of March. As the Emperor, when
regaining his throne, did not think fit to speak of me, I was
therefore bound to be silent; but I am as eager to live in the memory
of after-ages as he can possibly be[30]. It is my wish that posterity
may learn, that I too shared in the glorious enterprise of subverting
the Bourbon government, and of bringing back the Emperor. My mind
misgives me. I have a presentiment that I shall die in this campaign.
Keep my manuscript, and promise to publish it when the time shall
arrive." I gave my word accordingly; and the forebodings of my friend
were realised, for he was killed at Waterloo.
[Footnote 30: At Malmaison the Emperor asked me
what had become of M. Z***. I answered that he had
been killed on Mount St. Jean: "Well," answered the
Emperor, "he is happy. But pray did he tell you
that he had been at Elba?"--"Yes, Sire; he even
entrusted me with the narrative of his voyage, and
of the conversations which he had with your
Majesty."--"You must give me this narrative: I will
take it with me: it will help me in the composition
of my memoirs."--"Sire, it is no longer in my
possession."--"What have you done with it? you must
get it back, and let me have it to-morrow."--"I
have deposited it with a friend, who happens to be
absent from Paris."--"So the narrative will be
handed about at the mercy of the world."--"No,
Sire. It is inclosed in an envelope, and deposited
in a box of which I keep the key; but if I should
not be able to deliver it to your Majesty, before
your Majesty's departure, it will yet come to your
knowledge, for I intend to publish it according to
the last wishes of M. Z***, unless your Majesty
forbids me."--"No; I allow you to print it, only
leave out whatever may tend to compromise those who
have displayed their attachment towards me. If Z***
has made a faithful report of all that passed, the
people will know that I sacrificed myself for their
good; and that it was not the love of power which
brought me again into France, but that I yielded to
the desire of restoring to the French those gifts
which are dearest to great nations--independence
and glory. Take care lest they should get hold of
your manuscript--they will falsify it. Send it to
England to *****; he will print it; he is devoted
to me, and he may be very useful to you. M. ***
will give you a letter for him: do you understand
me?"--"Yes, Sire."--"But do your utmost to recover
your manuscript before my departure. I see that you
are anxious to keep it, and I will leave it with
you. I only wish to read it." The Emperor read the
manuscript, and he returned it to me, saying, "Z***
has told the truth, and nothing but the truth; keep
his manuscript for future generations."]
I now fulfil my promise. I have not dared to make any alterations in
the narrative: if I had, I should have felt that I was betraying the
wishes of my friend. But I have suppressed the names of the parties
concerned, and I have expunged some passages, in which the Bourbon
family were treated with disrespect.
HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE 20th OF MARCH.
When Napoleon resigned his crown, I broke my sword. I swore that I
never more would use it in the service of France, or of the new
Sovereign of the nation. But the generous farewell of the Emperor
could not fail to affect me; and, conquered by the irresistible
influence which the love of glory and of our native land exercises
upon a French soldier, I soon awoke to more praiseworthy and more
tempered feelings. My recollections faded, my regrets were softened,
and I aspired most sincerely to the honour of being again useful to my
country, and to my country's King.
At first the character which I had earned, procured for me the most
gratifying reception. Dazzling prospects were held out to me. I
believed that I was treated with sincerity. This error was of short
duration. Deceived and baffled, I now understood that they were
cheating the army and myself. They affected to honour us in the
aggregate, because they were afraid of us; and they insulted us
individually, in conformity to their systematic hated. My character
was too proud to allow me to bear with the insults and the contempt
which they wished to pour out upon me. I resigned my commission.
France and her government sickened me; but my military enthusiasm had
not abated. I thought that I should be recollected by the Emperor, who
had distinguished me in the field of battle; and that he would deign
to grant that boon which was dearest to my heart; that he would allow
me to live and die in his service. I therefore made up my mind to
visit the isle of Elba.
Just, however, as I was on the point of departing, I was stopped by a
sudden thought. Abandoned, betrayed, and denied, by men whom he has
heaped with rewards and honours, will the Emperor really believe that
I am really attached to him? Perhaps he will even suspect that I am a
spy, and that the Bourbons have sent me to watch his words and
actions. I was still in relation with those persons who had formerly
enjoyed the confidence of the Emperor. Since the restoration, their
conduct had been marked by frankness and honesty. Their feelings led
them to be faithful to the person of Napoleon; their patriotism and
their principles led them to be devoted to his cause; and they had not
sought to conceal either their fidelity or their devotion. Many
efforts had been made to gain them over to the royal party, but they
had continued immoveable. I therefore thought, that whatever
recommendation I could obtain from any one of the persons in question,
would protect me from the suspicions of the Emperor; and to them I
therefore confided my plans and the causes of my uneasiness, without
hesitation or reserve.
The first, and the second, to whom I thus applied, severally assured
me that they took the most lively interest in the undertaking, and
they betrayed the most tender anxiety for its result. They desired me
to express to the Emperor the grief which his loss had occasioned to
them, and their hopes of seeing him once more; but both were afraid to
compromise themselves by writing to him, and I quitted them without
having obtained my wishes. Then I proceeded to the third, whom I shall
call Monsieur X. We had known each other in those eventful periods
when men are put to the test, and he had kindly formed and retained a
favourable opinion of my character and courage. I unveiled my projects
and my fears. "Your fears," answered he, "are well founded. The
Emperor will distrust you, and probably he will not allow you to
continue with him. My recommendation would, without doubt, be of great
utility to you, but I cannot give it without danger. Not that I should
be in danger, for my affection towards the Emperor is well known to
all the world, but we might put the Emperor himself in jeopardy; for,
if they were to take my letter from you, they might give it over to a
spy, nay, even to an assassin."
This argument appeared conclusive to me, but I answered, "A lucky
thought flashes across my mind. You have acted so long and so often in
connexion with the Emperor, that surely you must be able to recollect
some circumstances, some disclosures known only to yourselves, which,
if I relate them to his Majesty, will prove to him that you trust me,
and that I am worthy of his trust."--"Your idea is excellent; yet,"
added he, "I must either give you insignificant details, and then the
Emperor will have forgotten them, or I must reveal important secrets
to you, and I am forbidden by my duty to do so; yet I will turn the
matter over in my mind. Call here again to-morrow morning."
I called again. "I have ransacked my memory," said M. X*** as he
accosted me, "and here is the very thing which you want." He then
delivered a note to me. "I had only considered your expedition to
Elba," continued M. X***, "in relation to your own concerns; but it is
of much greater importance than you imagine, or than I myself thought
it would be. It may produce tremendous consequences. It is impossible
that the Emperor can be indifferent to what is going on in France. If
he was to put any questions to you on that head, how would you answer
him? You must be fully aware how very dangerous it might be if you
were to give him an erroneous idea of our political situation."--"Though
I am a soldier by profession, yet I am not an utter novice in
politics. I have often reflected on the present position of France. I
really think that I understand enough of the matter to be able to
satisfy the curiosity of Napoleon."--"I don't doubt it: but, come,
what is your opinion of affairs?"
In answer to this interrogatory, I entered into an illustrative
analysis of the faults of government, and of the consequences ensuing
therefrom. Our conversation became warmer, and when, after having
discussed the time present, we began to contemplate futurity, our
thoughts were evolved with so much rapidity; we were carried so much
further than we intended, that we ourselves were astonished, and we
then both continued during a short interval in a kind of reverie. I
was the first who broke silence. "Well," said I, "suppose the Emperor,
after having questioned me, were to ask, Do you think the time of my
re-appearance in France is arrived, what must I answer?"--"You will
tell his Majesty that I could not dare to decide so important a
question; but that he may consider it as a positive and incontestible
fact that our present government (as you have well observed) has
wholly lost the confidence of the people and of the army; that
discontent has increased to the highest pitch; and that it is
impossible to believe that the government can stand much longer
against the universal dislike. You will add, that the Emperor is the
only object of the regret and hope of the nation. He, in his wisdom,
will decide what he ought to do."--"If he asks me whether this opinion
is only yours, or whether Messrs. ******* all share in it, what shall
I answer?"--"Tell him that since his abdication those persons have
ceased to be in communication with each other, but that my opinion is
conformable to the general opinion."--"I am now able to answer all
the questions which the Emperor may ask. Adieu."
We embraced each other repeatedly, and we parted.
As soon as I had quitted M. X*** all that had passed between us filled
my mind again. I now contemplated at leisure the mission which I was
called upon to fulfil. I measured its extent, and weighed its
consequences, and I could not help feeling astonished, and in some
measure alarmed, by the result of this self-examination. So long as I
merely intended to go to Elba for the sole purpose of offering my
services to the Emperor, my journey appeared to be nothing out of the
common course of things, and I thought that I should not have
hesitated to declare to the government that I was going to rejoin my
former benefactor, the Sovereign of my choice; but since the object of
my journey had become so much more important; since, to use the words
of M. X***, it might produce tremendous consequences, it seemed that
the government would not fail to watch me; that it would dog me in my
path, and endeavour to spy out all my words and actions.
Hence I became suspicious and uneasy. The note of M. X*** appeared an
immense burthen. I got it by heart, and then I threw it in the fire.
Instead of asking at once for a passport to Genoa or Leghorn, as I had
at first intended, I asked for a passport to Milan. There was a
General officer then residing in that city whom I knew; and I thought
that if the Police were to question me, I might then declare that I
was going to Milan in order to settle my accounts with my friend the
General, he being in my debt for money which I had advanced to him.
Having thus settled my plan, I went on to the "prefecture de police."
Whilst I was stepping across the threshold of the door, my heart began
to beat so violently that I could hardly move or breathe. If at that
instant any body had cried out to me, "Rascal, what are you about?" I
think I should have dropped, and that I should have let out the whole
secret. It must not be thought that my confusion arose from cowardly
fear; no, it was the impression which every honest man ought to feel,
when, for the first time in his life, he commits an action which he is
under the necessity of concealing.
In a few minutes I came to myself again. In I went, and presented
myself boldly to Monsieur Riviere, the Prefect of Police. He
cross-questioned me at full length, but my answers were clear and
firm. My countenance was unabashed, and appeared to preclude all
suspicion, and he granted my passport. Yet, at all events, I thought
it prudent to ascertain whether I was watched, and to my great
surprise I found that during two days I was closely followed. I did
not give any token by which my spy could ascertain that I was aware of
his company, and, in order to mislead him, I went to the
_messageries_, where I took and paid for a place in the Lyons
diligence. But when night came I hired post-horses under a feigned
name, and set off as fast as possible, and in a few days I was at
Milan.
My friend the General was absent: I wrote to him, and he hastened to
meet me. I confessed that I intended to try to obtain employment under
Napoleon.--"You won't get it," said he; "Napoleon has not ready money
enough to pay his body guard. A good many of my old officers have
joined him, and for themselves and their families they only receive
fifty, or perhaps sixty francs a month. They are in a state of
starvation and despair."--"No matter; I love the Emperor, and come
what may, I will join him. Do tell me how I can soonest put to
sea."--"The thing is not easy; there is no place from whence you can
sail, except only from Leghorn or from Genoa; and those two points are
under such close inspection, that you will be sure to be taken up, if
you are known to be a Bonapartist. You might slip through with greater
ease if you could pass for a tradesman of this town. I will try to get
you a passport, but I am afraid it will be a difficult job."--"Besides,
there is another difficulty, which is still greater; _ma foi_! I can't
speak a dozen words of Italian."--"Is it possible?"--"Yes, I am in
earnest."--"And you would venture on such a scheme! are you
crazy?"--"Crazy or not, I will venture; but can I really embark no
where but at Leghorn or Genoa?"--"There are very many small ports on
the coast of Tuscany, but if you go to any of them you must stop till
there is an opportunity of getting out; and in the mean time you would
be under the _surveillance_ of the authorities, who are, one and all,
exceedingly ill-disposed towards the Emperor and his people. Perhaps
you might be able to embark immediately in the gulf of Spezzia at
Lerici; but, in order to get there, you must go through Genoa, and
along the shore; and then there is great reason to fear that you may
be snapped either by the Piedmontese carabineers, or by the new consul
at Genoa, who, according to what I hear, is quite outrageous. There is
another road through the mountains of Spezzia, but it has not been
used for a long time, and you would run the risk either of breaking
your neck, or of being knocked on the head."--"No matter, if there is
no danger in the victory there is no glory in the triumph. That road
suits me; and to-morrow I will set out on my expedition."--"Is your
passport all right?"--"I will go and get it marked for Lerici."--"Another
piece of stupidity; don't you know that here you have to deal with our
implacable enemies, the Austrians, who will raise all kinds of
difficulties; but I know a Tedesco Colonel (in Italy an Austrian is
called a Tedesco), who will probably be able to do the needful for us:
we will ask him to come and dine with us. Business or quarrels can all
be settled with these gentry when they are feeding."
Our Tedesco Colonel really got my passport through the office. I left
my "caleche" and my baggage at Milan, and the next day I started in a
"seggiola," a kind of a little cabriolet, in which you drive along at
an infernal rate. I travelled through cross roads till I came to the
foot of the mountains. As it was impossible to ascend them in a
wheeled carriage, I was compelled, though reluctantly, to separate
myself from my "conducteur." I bought two horses, one for myself, and
the other for my new guide; this new guide could not speak a word of
French. I had taken care to provide myself with a pocket dictionary,
French and Italian; but I was completely ignorant, or at least very
nearly so, of the way either of pronouncing Italian words, or of
arranging them; and thus our conversation was reduced on both sides to
a few detached phrases, which were often mutually unintelligible.
We set out at break of day. About noon the snow began to fall, and we
had the greatest difficulty imaginable in reaching a hamlet, the name
whereof I have forgotten. The next day the weather became still more
wretched; my guide's horse foundered in the snow, and we lost two
hours in hauling him out again. My guide was an Italian, and, like all
Italians, he was full of superstition, and easily discouraged. He
considered this accident as a bad omen, and he wanted to turn back; I
could only conquer his repugnance by means of a double Napoleon d'or.
Scarcely had I given it to him when I felt the extent of my
imprudence; I was exciting his avarice, and perhaps exposing myself to
become his victim. As we advanced, the road became worse and worse; at
every step we encountered pits and holes, or the road was stopped by
rocks which had fallen in, and which forced us to scramble through new
paths. So much snow had fallen in the north of Italy, and particularly
in the district which we were then crossing, that even the muleteers
had deserted the mountains: and my guide, unable to discern the beaten
road, was compelled to make a survey at every step, lest we should
either lose ourselves, or else tumble down the precipices which
bordered our road of danger. The next day we arrived at Borcetto; the
perils which I had escaped taught me caution: I hired two more horses,
and another guide; and for this addition to my train, I paid out of
all reason. I then met with a custom-house officer, who either out of
kindness, or for the purpose of alarming me, I know not which, warned
me to be particularly on my guard in crossing "la Size," a very lofty
and dangerous mountain, for he told me that it swarmed with robbers. I
put fresh priming in my pistols; I turned up my eyes toward Heaven to
implore its protection, and I set out. When we had proceeded half
way up the mountain, I was accosted by a soldier, who compelled me to
enter the guard-house, and to produce my passport. This post, which
had been lately established for the security of travellers, was
occupied by a subaltern and by six soldiers, who had all served in the
imperial army. They guessed by my looks that I had seen some service,
and, after a short conversation, they asked me to come in and warm
myself by drinking the health of the Emperor Napoleon. I refused at
first, lest I should be entrapped, but they insisted so frankly that I
was compelled to yield. On taking leave I gave them a twenty-franc
piece, in order to drink the health of Napoleon, and mine too; and I
begged them to recommend my guides to take care of me. The commandant
called the guides, and at the same time that he fired a volley of
oaths and curses, he declared that if any accident happened to me, he
would shoot them both on their return. My worthy military friends also
escorted me during a considerable distance, and we separated with
feelings which no one but a soldier can appreciate or understand.
We were to sleep at Pontremoli. Our halt retarded us, and night
overtook us. In order to shorten the distance, my guides led me by a
broad path which wound round the side of the mountain. The descent
was so steep that our horses came down every moment, and we ourselves
were obliged to slide along. I found myself at the foot of the
mountain in a spot which was so dark and dreary, that I fancied my
guides had conducted me thither in order to dispatch me. After having
groped along for some time, my guides stopped. The darkness and the
snow concealed the face of the country to such a degree, that they did
not know where they were, nor which way they ought to turn: their fear
became excessive; they prayed to all the Saints in heaven in their
turn: they shook each other by the hand, and embraced each other like
sailors on the point of being shipwrecked. My _sang froid_ did not
desert me; I took one of the horses which looked like an old roadster;
I dropped the bridle on his neck, and gave him a sound cut with my
whip; he started, I followed, and a few minutes afterwards, to the
inexpressible surprise, and also to the inexpressible satisfaction of
my guides, we found ourselves in the right road, and within half an
hour's ride of Pontremoli, where we arrived towards midnight.
From Pontremoli to Spezzia there was yet a journey of four-and-twenty
hours; and four-and-twenty hours on such roads as I had gone over
are equal to four-and-twenty centuries. But how great was my delight
on quitting Pontremoli, when, instead of the frozen rocks and deserts,
which I had crossed the eve before, I saw nothing as I looked around,
but valleys clothed with verdure, and enamelled with flowers; and
hills surrounded and crowned by evergreens and olive-trees. On the day
before, winter reigned with all his severity; the day after exhibited
spring with all her charms. This pleasing transition beguiled my
impatience; and the agitations which had become habitual to my soul
were succeeded by that happy tranquillity, which is inspired by the
contemplation of the beauties and the gifts of nature.
A few leagues beyond Pontremoli the road is interrupted by a deep and
rapid stream. There is a ford across this torrent. It had scarcely
been indicated to me by my guides, beyond whom I had advanced, when I
dashed into the water; but instead of guiding my horse to the right
(as I ought to have done), I took the opposite direction. My guides,
who saw my mistake, screamed out in Italian, "fermate, fermate!" which
means, "stop, stop!" I thought it meant "firm, firm!" so I whipped and
spurred my horse with all my might; he lost his footing, and I
narrowly escaped drowning. When I reached the opposite shore my
guides treated me with a sermon, which I dare say was very energetic,
and in which the "Devil and the Frenchman" appeared to be the leading
actors.
I arrived on the **** at Lerici. I rejoiced when I saw the sea before
me, when I saw the last obstacle which was interposed between the
fulfilment of my hopes and the termination of my labours. But
unhappily my joy was of short duration; in the course of the night I
was attacked by an oppression on my chest, accompanied by a burning
fever: this was the result of the cold bath which I had taken in the
river. My mental sufferings were severe: I thought to myself, if I
should be so unlucky as to get an inflammation on my lungs, what will
become of me here without help, without friends, and in a strange
land? Ah, my beloved country! ah, my dear mother! have I left you
both, in order to perish in the arms of hirelings and of strangers!
Have I only reached the long wished-for shores of Spezzia but to
experience the grief of not being able to sail from them! Ah, if I
could but have reached the Emperor, if I could but have spoken to him,
if I could but have expired at his feet, then I should not have
regretted life! My devoted attachment would have been known; my memory
honoured; my name, linked to the destiny of the Emperor, would,
perhaps, have descended with his unto posterity.... I sent for a
doctor: by singular good fortune, the medical man who came to attend
me was a retired army surgeon, a worthy man, and a great admirer of
the French. When I was quite out of danger, he expressed a wish to
know the motives which had induced me to cross the mountains to
Lerici: and he gave me to understand that he guessed my views. A man
who speaks is always liable to less suspicion than a man who says
nothing; I therefore thought it right to allay the doctor's curiosity.
After exhorting him to secrecy, and making a great mystery of the
matter, I confessed that I was a Colonel in the French army, and that
an officer who held a high rank in the service of Napoleon had married
my sister. My sister, I proceeded to state, was so afflicted and
broken down by the expatriation of her husband, that her medical
attendants had declared her life to be in the greatest danger. My
sister's illness, and the care of her four small children, prevented
her from rejoining her husband; and therefore, in order to restore
health and happiness to my poor dear sister, I had determined to go to
Elba, for the purpose of reminding my brother-in-law of the duty which
he owed to his wife and children, and that I hoped to be able to
induce him to return to France, at least for a short time.
I took care to diversify my romance with sighs and sentimental
reflections, and it appeared to affect him exceedingly. He condoled
with me, he tried to console me; he gave me the most flattering hopes,
and he promised to serve me to the utmost of his power, and with all
his heart and soul.
As soon as I was in a state of convalescence, I became more ardent
than before, in search of an immediate opportunity of embarking. My
complaisant doctor introduced me to the captain of a running felucca,
and I hired his vessel for a fortnight.
The captain asked me for my passport, in order that he might receive
his "_feuille de bord_" and his "_boletta_" from the port officer.
This was in consequence of regulations of which I was wholly ignorant.
The fact is, that no vessel can clear out of one port, or enter
another, without a "_feuille de bord_," stating the complement of the
crew, and the number of passengers; and a "_boletta_," or certificate,
delivered by the health officers to each of the passengers and crew
individually, stating that the bearer has not been attacked by any
infectious disorder. These papers are only delivered on the
production of the passports, to which they must correspond exactly. I
did not expect this proceeding; my plans were all disorganized: my
passport did not authorize me to embark; and I was afraid if I
produced it, (for in such situations we are afraid of every thing),
that difficulties might arise, and that they would refer to the Consul
or his agents.
The Captain guessed the cause of my uneasiness, and he offered to
procure a passport and a _boletta_ under a feigned name. I refused: I
thought it more advisable to run the risk of being punished as a
Bonapartist than as an impostor. "Since you will not do so," said the
captain, "there is but one course which you can pursue: you must get
on board a boat, and pass for a common sailor. I will manage the
business for you."--Some hours afterwards the captain came to me with
a Gallo-Genoese sailor, who offered to take me, without any papers,
wherever I wished to go. He added, that he had a relation who was a
gunner on board the Inconstant, a brig belonging to Napoleon, and that
he should be very glad to see him again. I judged that my design of
going to Elba had got wind: I therefore determined, if possible, to
depart that very night. It was therefore agreed that Salviti, so the
sailor was called, should fetch me, and that we should put out to sea,
however bad the weather might prove.
Whilst these arrangements were going on my doctor paid me a visit. The
doctor told me that the commandant of the town, whom he attended, was
going to send a file of his carabineers to bring me before him in
order to ascertain the reason of my arrival, and of my residence on
the shores of the gulf. "I told him," continued the doctor, "that you
are unwell, and that you are going to your family in Corsica, and that
you intend to begin your voyage as soon as you are able to support the
fatigue. I think I have made him easier, yet don't trust him: be off
as quick as you can."--"I shall be off to-night; but as your
commandant or his gensdarmes might take a fancy to lay hold of me
between this and then, I therefore think it will be more prudent for
me to go to him of my own accord, and to confirm the story which you
have had the goodness to tell him." Accordingly I went immediately to
the Commandant; and as the doctor had let me into the character of the
man, I easily succeeded in pleasing and tranquillizing him. However,
he made me promise that I would bring my passport to him to-morrow. I
gave as many promises as he could wish. At midnight we set sail; and
by break of day we had already lost sight of the gulf of Spezzia, and
of the majestic scenery which surrounds it. The bark which carried me
and all my fortunes was only a common boat with four oars and a lateen
sail. The crew consisted of six men; Salviti could speak French, and
he was a good-looking fellow: the countenances of the others displayed
want and utter profligacy. They examined me with great curiosity, and
they were constantly talking about me. Salviti interpreted their
discourse. I gave them civil language. We even seek to please sailors
when we are in need of their help[31]. I was sea-sick without
intermission; and to complete my misfortunes I had omitted to furnish
myself with provisions. I was therefore obliged to mess with my
companions; and their food consisted of stinking salt fish, and
chiefly of _bacalao_, or salt cod, which is eaten quite raw.
[Footnote 31: On cherche a plaire meme a des
matelots quand on a besoin d'eux.]
The wind was against us, therefore we did not come in sight of the
lighthouse of Leghorn until the morning of the second day. How can I
express my surprise and anger when I saw that our vessel was making
the mouth of the harbour! "Salviti, where are you taking me?"--"To
Leghorn."--"I won't go to Leghorn," I exclaimed with a great oath. "It
is not to Leghorn that you promised to take me."--Salviti answered,
with confusion, that he was not the owner of the vessel, but that he
hired it in partnership with the rest of the crew, that they were all
smugglers, and that they were going to Leghorn for the purpose of
arranging an expedition of consequence with other smugglers there.
Their business would be soon settled, and then they would take me to
Porto Ferrajo; and he declared that he gave his word of honour that he
would do so, and that I might trust him.--"I will not agree to all
this," I exclaimed, presenting my pistols to his breast: "Let us go
straight on to Elba, or I will shoot you."--"Shoot away, if you like,
but you will not do yourself much good: my companions will heave you
into the sea, or else you will be guillotined at Leghorn." The
coolness of the fellow completely disarmed me. "Well, then," said I,
"swear that you will take me to-morrow to the isle of Elba."--"I have
told you already that I am a scoundrel if I break my word." The
sailors did not understand a word of our dialogue, nor could they
make out what was the cause of my fury. One of them, who had deserted
from the English navy, seized a big knife in the shape of a stiletto.
The others seemed to wait the result, in order to throw themselves
upon me. When this scene had finished, I endeavoured to bribe Salviti
to turn back, but no; he had given his word of honour to go to
Leghorn, and his word of honour was inviolable. Thus I was conducted
against my will into the trap which I wished to avoid. I was worked up
to the highest pitch of fury and vexation; I foamed with rage and
despair. Thus, thought I, wringing my hands, these ruffians will
deprive me of the reward which I was to obtain for my sufferings.
Alas! the Emperor, the Emperor! so near him--under his eyes--at the
moment that--"Rascal!" I cried out to Salviti, "I will follow you like
your shadow, and sooner than allow myself to be arrested, I will blow
out your brains!"--Salviti shrugged up his shoulders, and answered,
"Well and good; but, in the mean time, strip, and dress yourself like
a sailor."--"Why?"--"Why! why, because you have no passport, and they
will lock you up."--I submitted to this new tribulation. One of the
wretches pulled off a heavy jacket with a hood attached to it, in
which I arrayed myself. A coloured handkerchief, all drenched with
sweat and filthiness, was taken from the neck of another of them, and
tied round mine. A third gave me his woollen cap; and in spite of my
unavoidable disgust, I was compelled to draw it on my head down to my
eyes. My beard, by good luck, did not disgrace my unshaved messmates,
and in order that the colour of my hands might not betray me, I washed
them in the bilge-water which stagnated beneath the flooring of our
boat. More remained to be done: our "_feuille de bord_" stated that
our crew consisted of six men: we were seven. It therefore, became
necessary to hide one[32]. We chose him who was the shortest, and the
most slender. He nestled at the end of the boat, and we covered him
with some old mats and sailors' jackets. These preparations being
terminated, I was told to seat myself in the place of a rower, and to
take an oar in my hand; and at night-fall we came into the road of
Leghorn.
[Footnote 32: As only six were noted in the
"_feuille de bord_" they took an extra sailor, in
order that there might be six on board after my
landing, otherwise, on landing, they would have
been obliged to account for the sailor whom I
represented.]
Salviti presented his papers. The date was too old[33]. The officers
raised objections: he lost his temper; and by way, both of punishment
and precaution, we were ordered to submit to the lesser quarantine,
that is to say, to remain prisoners in the roads during three days.
[Footnote 33: The time required for sailing from
one port to another is pretty well ascertained; if
this period is exceeded, and no sufficient reason
can be assigned for the delay, it is assumed that
the vessel may have touched at some infected port;
and, by excess of caution, they compel you to
undergo the lesser quarantine. The lesser
quarantine is also ordered as a punishment when the
master of a vessel does not behave with due respect
and submission to the health officers.]
Salviti came with a sorrowful visage and announced this fresh
misfortune; our vessel tacked about, and we reached our station of
exile.
On the morning of the third day Salviti informed me that, according to
custom, they intended to put an "inspector of health" on board of our
vessel, who would pass the night with us, in order to ascertain
whether we were all well. From the person who had brought, or who,
rather, had thrown us our provisions (for all contact is prohibited
under pain of death), he had ascertained the name of our intended
inspector. He was a gamester and a drunkard. Salviti procured cards
and wine; and he assured me that he would manage the inspector in such
a manner as to prevent his taking any notice of me.
As for me, I was not as easy as Salviti. I was afraid lest the
inspector might discover the sailor whom we had hidden, or that he
might guess by my manner, my looks, and my awkwardness, that I was not
really the character which I seemed to be. Besides, a single question
would have ended the matter. I did not understand a single word of
Italian, and I should have betrayed myself either by answering him, or
by remaining silent. It came into my head to counterfeit deafness:
this would excuse me from taking a part in the conversation: and to
make believe that I had a wound in my hand: this would account for my
inactivity, and prevent his observing how little I knew of my
pretended occupation. I drew a few drops of blood, which I smeared
upon some dirty rags, in which I wrapped my hand. Salviti explained my
stratagem to my companions, and their loud peals of laughter explained
to me that they approved of it. The inspector arrived. I kept myself
to myself. Salviti acted his part admirably. So did I: and to my great
delight the evening closed, and nothing disagreeable had happened.
Until this night I had always slept separately from the rest on a
tolerable mattress. But the inspector was now accommodated with my
birth and my bed; and I was compelled to lie on the floor with the
sailors; my head being placed even with the feet of my two next
neighbours. The stench and closeness of the atmosphere of my den drove
the blood into my head, and I thought I should have been suffocated.
Early in the morning my companions began to eat and drink: I kept at a
distance. "Come here, and eat," said Salviti.--"I can't."--"The
inspector will fancy that you are ill, and that will be enough to give
us another quarantine."--I ate. At ten o'clock the health-officers
came near us; and as our inspector made a favourable report, we were
allowed to enter the harbour. I remained on board with one of the
crew, whom I kept as a hostage. The smugglers broke up their cabinet
council about two o'clock; and at three o'clock we quitted our
anchorage. A fair wind filled the sail, and I forgot all my sufferings
and my dangers when I perceived the rock where I was to meet with
Napoleon the Great.
We entered the road of Porto Ferrajo[34], without any difficulty, at
the moment when the cannon fired, announcing that the harbour was
about to close. I heard the French drums sounding the roll: my heart
beat high: I passed the night on the deck of the boat. Notwithstanding
the joy which I felt at my arrival, I could not help indulging in a
certain degree of melancholy, inspired, perhaps, by the silence of the
night, and the aspect of the arid and gloomy mountains which
surrounded me. Ah, how vain is human grandeur! thought I. The air of
that sterile islet is breathed by that incomprehensible man who lately
felt that he had not breathing room in Europe. It is in that humble
hovel that he now dwells with his scanty train of faithful followers;
He whom I have seen in the palace of the Caesars, receiving the homage
and the worship of the most brilliant court in the world; He whom I
have seen sitting covered, whilst eight Kings stood before him with
their hats in their hands. It is over this little tribe alone, not
exceeding the population of a village, that Napoleon the Great is now
doomed to reign! Napoleon the Great! He who endowed the thrones of his
allies with the leavings of his conquests--He who so long was the
master and the terror of the universe!
[Footnote 34: I had believed, according to the
statements in the ministerial journals, that the
sea was covered by French and English ships, by
which all vessels and passengers, proceeding to the
island, were intercepted. I did not meet with a
single ship of this description. The ports were
placed under a "surveillance," equally brutal and
tyrannical, but the sea was free. All vessels went
in and out of Porto Ferrajo without experiencing
the slightest obstacle.]
The sun rose, and put an end to my musings. My joy was inexpressible
when I recognized on the ramparts those old grenadiers whom I had so
often admired and honoured on the field of battle.
I jumped on shore, and I rushed into the nearest inn for the purpose
of putting off my sailor's dress, and then flying to the palace of
Napoleon. But I had been watched and followed: and the functionaries
despatched by general Cambronne, the Commandant of the town,
immediately appeared to secure me. I tranquillized them, and they
accompanied me to the town-house, where General Bertrand then lodged.
I sent in my name, and the General came out. "Sir, do you come from
France?"--"Yes, Monsieur le Marechal."--"What do you want here?"--"I
wish to see the Emperor, and to solicit employment."--"Does the
Emperor know you?"--"Yes, Sir, and M. X*** has also given me the
means of proving to the Emperor that I am not unworthy of his
goodness."--"Do you bring us any news from France?"--"I do, Monsieur
le Marechal; and I think that the intelligence which I bring is
good."--"Well, Heaven hears you; as for us, we are so wretched--I am
dying with impatience to have a talk with you about France; but I must
inform the Emperor of your arrival. Perhaps he may not be able to see
you immediately. To-day the English corvette[35] is here, and those
people are suspicious of every thing: is it publicly known who you
are?"--"It is known that I am a French officer."--"So much the worse;
hide your decorations, hold your tongue, and remain within doors and
rest yourself at your inn. I will send for you."--Half an hour
afterwards the Marshal desired me to proceed as quickly as possible to
the Emperor's garden-gate: the Emperor, would come there, and speak to
me without appearing to know me. I went accordingly: the Emperor,
according to his custom, was walking with his hands behind his back.
He passed several times before me without lifting up his eyes; at last
he looked at me: he stopped, and asked me in Italian what countryman
I was. I answered in French that I was a Parisian; that business had
called me to Italy; and that I could not resist the desire of seeing
my old sovereign.--"Well, Sir, talk to me about Paris and
France;"--and as he finished these words he began to walk again. I
accompanied him; and after he had put several indifferent questions to
me aloud, he desired me to enter his apartments: he then ordered
Bertrand and Drouot to retire, and forced me to sit down by his side.
Napoleon began in a reserved and absent manner: "The grand Marshal
tells me that you have just arrived from France."--"Yes, Sire."--"What
do you want here?"--"Sire, I wish to offer my services to you; my
conduct in 1814--" Napoleon interrupting me,--"Sir, I do not question
but that you are a very good officer, however I have so many officers
with me already, that it will be very difficult for me to assist you;
yet we will see: it appears that you know M. X***."--"Yes,
Sire."--"Has he sent a letter for me by you?"--"No, Sire."--Napoleon,
interrupting me, "I see he forgets me just like the rest; since I have
been here, I have not heard a word of him or of any body."--I
interrupted the Emperor in my turn, "Sire, he has never ceased to
entertain those sentiments of devotion and attachment towards your
Majesty which are still cherished by all true Frenchmen; and--"
Napoleon, with disdain; "What, do they still think of me in
France?"--"Never will they forget you."--"Never! that is a strong
expression; the French have another Sovereign, and they are commanded
both by their duty and their tranquillity to think on him alone." This
answer did not please me: the Emperor, thought I to myself, is out of
humour because I have not brought him any letters; he mistrusts me: it
was not worth while to come so far for the sake of such an ungracious
reception.--Napoleon, continuing, "What do they think about me in
France?"--"There, your Majesty is universally deplored and
regretted."--"Yes, and there, also, they manufacture all sorts of lies
concerning me. Sometimes they say that I am mad, sometimes that I am
ill, and you may see (here the Emperor looked at his _embonpoint_), if
I look like an ailing man. It is also given out that they intend to
transport me either to St. Helena or to Malta. I would not advise them
to try. I have provisions for six months, and brave followers to
defend me: but I cannot think that Europe will be so dishonourable as
to rise in arms against a single man, who has neither the power nor
the inclination of hurting others. The emperor Alexander has too much
love for posterity to lend himself to such a crime. They have
guaranteed the sovereignty of the isle of Elba to me by a solemn
treaty. Here I am in my own home; and as long as I do not go out to
pick a quarrel with my neighbours, they have no right to come and
disturb me ... have you served in the grand army?"--"Yes, Sire, I had
the felicity of distinguishing myself under your Majesty's eyes in the
plains of Champagne; your Majesty appeared to take such particular
notice of me, that I had dared to hope that your Majesty would
recollect me."--"Why, yes; I thought, somehow, that I knew your face
when I saw you, but I have only a confused recollection of you."--Poor
mortals! thought I to myself, go and expose your lives for the sake of
Kings, go and sacrifice your youth, your repose, your happiness for
their sake!--"In what affairs have you distinguished yourself?"--"Sire,
at *****, and at ***** Marshal Ney there presented me to your majesty,
saying, 'Sire, here is the intrepid S.... P..... of whom I have spoken
to your Majesty.'"--"Ah! ah! I really do recollect--yes, I was very
well pleased indeed, with your behaviour at **** and at ****; you
showed much resolution, much strength of character. Did I not
'decorate' you on the field of battle?"--"Yes, Sire."--Napoleon, with
greater warmth and confidence, "_Eh bien!_ how are they all treated in
France by the Bourbons?"--"Sire, the Bourbons have not realized the
expectations of the French, and the number of malcontents increases
every day."--Napoleon, sharply; "So much the worse, so much the worse:
but how, has not X. sent me any letters?"--"No, Sire; he was afraid
lest they might be taken from me; and as he thought that your Majesty,
being now compelled to be vigilant, and to distrust all the world,
might distrust me also, he has revealed several circumstances to me,
which are only known to your Majesty and to himself; thus enabling me
to give a proof that I am worthy of your Majesty's confidence."--"Let
us hear them." I began my detail, but he exclaimed, without allowing
me to finish, "that's enough; why did you not begin by telling me all
that? there is half an hour that we have lost." This storm[36]
disconcerted me. He perceived my confusion, and resumed his discourse
with mildness.--"Come, make yourself easy, and repeat to me, with the
greatest minuteness, all that has passed between you and X****." I
then related the circumstances which had induced me to have an
interview with Monsieur X****. I repeated our conversation word for
word. I gave him a complete account of all the faults and excesses of
the royal government; and I was going to draw the inferences which had
occurred to Monsieur X**** and me. But the Emperor, who, when he was
affected, was incapable of listening to any recital without
interrupting it, and making his comments at every moment, stopped my
mouth. "I thought so, too," said he, "when I abdicated, that the
Bourbons, instructed and disciplined by adversity, would not fall
again into the errors which ruined them in 1789. I thought that the
King would govern you '_en bon homme_.' This was the only way by which
he could obtain a pardon from you, for having been put upon you by
foreigners. But since they have stepped into France, they have done
nothing but acts of madness. Their treaty of the twenty-third of
April," (raising his voice,) "has made me deeply indignant: with one
stroke of the pen they have robbed France of Belgium, and of all the
territory acquired since the revolution. They have deprived the nation
of its docks, its arsenals, its fleets, its artillery, and the immense
_materiel_ which I had collected in the fortresses and the ports which
they have ceded. Talleyrand has led them into this infamous business:
he must have been bribed. Peace is easy upon such terms. If, like
them, I had consented to the ruin of France, they would not now be on
my throne:" (with energy,) "I would sooner have cut off my right hand.
I preferred renouncing my throne rather than to retain it by staining
my glory, and the honour of the French nation.... A degraded crown is
an intolerable burthen. My enemies have published everywhere, that I
obstinately refused to make peace. They have represented me as a
wretched madman, eager only for blood and carnage: this language
answered their turn. When you wish to hang your dog, you give out
that he is mad: _Quand on veut tuer son chien, il faut bien faire
accroire qu'il est enrage._ But Europe shall know the truth: I will
let the world know all that was said and done at Chatillon. I will
unmask the Austrians, the Russians, and the English with a powerful
hand. Europe shall judge: Europe shall say who was the rogue, and who
was wishing to shed human blood. If I had been mad for war, I might
have retired with my army beyond the Loire, and I might have enjoyed
mountain warfare to my heart's content. I would not; I was tired of
carnage ... my name, and the brave fellows who remained faithful to
me, yet made the allies tremble, even in my capital. They offered
Italy to me as the price of my abdication: I refused it. After once
reigning over France, one ought not to reign anywhere else. I chose
the isle of Elba. They were too happy to give Elba to me. This
position suited me. I can watch France and the Bourbons. All that I
have done has been only for France. It is for her sake and not for
mine that I wished to render her the first nation in the universe. My
glory is made for myself[37] *******. If I had only thought of
myself, I would have returned to a private station, but it was my duty
to retain the imperial title for my family and my son.... Next to
France, my son is the dearest object in the world to me."
[Footnote 35: The corvette commanded by Captain
Campbell.]
[Footnote 36: Napoleon usually liked to intimidate
and disconcert those who approached him. Sometimes
he feigned that he could not hear you, and then he
would make you repeat in a very loud tone what he
had heard perfectly well before. However, he was
really deaf in a slight degree. At other times he
would overwhelm you with such rapid and abrupt
interrogatories, that you had not time to
understand him, and were compelled to give your
answers in confusion. He used then to laugh at your
embarrassment; and when he had driven you out of
your presence of mind and confidence, he amused
himself at your expense.--_Note of the author of
the work._]
[Footnote 37: "Ma gloire est faite a moi. _Mon nom
vivra autant que celui de Dieu!!!_"]
During the whole of this discourse, the Emperor continued striding up
and down, and appeared violently agitated. He paused a little while,
and then he began again. "They (i.e. the emigrants) know too well that
I am here, and they would like to assassinate me. I discover new
plots, new snares every day. They have sent to Corsica one of the
assassins of Georges, a wretch whom the English journals themselves
have pointed out to Europe as a blood-thirsty assassin; but let us be
on the alert. If he misses me, I won't miss him. I shall send my
grenadiers after him, and he shall be shot as an example to others."
After a few moments of silence, he said, "Do my generals go to court?
they must cut a sad figure there." I waited for the end of this
digression, in order to resume the thread of my discourse. As I was
convinced that I could not possibly lead the conversation, I resolved
to let the Emperor have it according to his own way, and I answered,
"Yes, Sire, and they are furious to see themselves superseded in
favour by emigrants who have never heard the sound of a cannon."--"The
emigrants will never alter. As long as they were only required to
dance attendance in my anti-chamber, I had more than enough of them.
When it was necessary to show any heart, they slunk away like.... I
committed a great error, when I recalled that anti-national race into
France. If it had not been for me, they would have died of starvation
abroad; but then I had great motives. I wanted to reconcile Europe to
us, and to close the revolution.... What do my soldiers say about
me?"--"The soldiers, Sire, talk constantly about your immortal
victories. They never pronounce your name but with respect,
admiration, and grief. When the Princes give money to the soldiers,
they drink it out to your health, and when they are forced to cry
_Vive le Roi!_ they add in a whisper, _de Rome_."--"And so they still
love me?" (smiling.)--"Yes, Sire, and I may even venture to say, more
than ever."--"What do they say about our misfortunes?"--"They consider
them as the effect of treachery; and they constantly repeat, that they
never would have been conquered, if they had not been sold to their
enemies. They are particularly indignant with respect to the
capitulation of Paris."--"They are right: had it not been for the
infamous defection of the Duke of Ragusa, the allies would have been
lost. I was master of their rear, and of all their resources; not a
man would have escaped. They too would have had their twenty-ninth
bulletin. Marmont is a wretch; he has ruined his country, and
delivered up his sovereign. His convention with Schwartzenburg would
alone suffice to dishonour him. If he had not known when he
surrendered, that he compromised my person and my army, he would not
have found it necessary to make stipulations in favour of my liberty
and life. This piece of treachery is not the only one. He has
intrigued with Talleyrand to take the regency from the Empress, and
the crown from my son. Caulincourt, Macdonald, and the rest of the
marshals, have been cheated and gulled by him in the most shameful
manner. All his blood would not be sufficient to expiate the harm
which he has done to France.... I will devote his name to the
execration of posterity. I am glad to learn that my soldiers retain
the feeling of their superiority, and that they attribute our great
misfortunes to the right authors. I collect with great pleasure, from
the intelligence which you have brought, that the opinion which I had
formed respecting the situation of France, is correct. The family of
the Bourbons is not fit to reign. Their government may be good for
priests, nobles, and old fashioned countesses: it is good for nothing
for the present generation. The revolution has taught the people to
know their rank in the state. They will never consent to fall back
into their former nullity, and to be tied up by the nobility and the
clergy. The army can never belong to the Bourbons. Our victories and
our misfortunes have established an indissoluble tie between the army
and myself. It is only through me that the soldiers can earn
vengeance, power, and glory. From the Bourbons they can get nothing
but insults and blows. Kings can only retain their power by the love
of their subjects or by fear. The Bourbons are neither loved nor
feared. At last they will throw themselves off their throne; but they
may yet retain their position for a long time. Frenchmen do not know
how to conspire."
In pronouncing these words, the Emperor continued walking hastily, and
using many gestures. He rather appeared to be soliloquizing than
addressing any one else; he then continued, looking at me aside, "Does
M. X*** think that those people can stand much longer?"--"His opinion
on this point is exactly conformable to the general opinion; that is
to say, it is now the general impression and conviction, that the
government is hastening to its fall. The priests and the emigrants are
its only partisans; every man of patriotism or soul is its
enemy."--Napoleon (with energy), "Yes, all men in whose veins any
national blood is flowing must be its enemies; but how will all this
end? Is it thought that there will be a new revolution?"--"Sire,
discontent and irritation prevail to such an extent, that the
slightest partial effervescence would inevitably cause a general
insurrection, and nobody would be surprised if it were to take place
to-morrow."--"But what would you do were you to expel the Bourbons:
would you re-establish the republic?"--"The republic, Sire! nobody
thinks about it; perhaps they would create a regency."--Napoleon (with
vehemence and surprise), "A regency! And wherefore? am I dead?"--"But
your absence...."--"My absence makes no difference. In a couple of
days I would be back again in France, if the nation were to recal me.
Do you think it would be well, if I were to return?" The Emperor
turned away his eyes, and I could easily remark, that to this
question he attached more importance than he cared to manifest, and
that he expected my answer with anxiety. "Sire, I dare not personally
attempt to answer such a question, but...."--Napoleon (abruptly),
"That's not what I am asking you; answer yes or no."--"Why then,
Sire,--yes."--Napoleon (with tenderness), "You really think
so?"--"Yes, Sire, I am convinced, and so is M. X****, that the people
and the army would receive you as their deliverer, and that your cause
would be embraced with enthusiasm."--Napoleon (appearing agitated and
impatient), "Then X*** advises me to return?"--"We had foreseen that
your Majesty would make inquiries on this point, and the following is
literally his answer. You will tell his Majesty that I would not dare
to decide so important a question, but that he may consider it as a
positive and incontrovertible fact, that our present government has
wholly lost the confidence of the people and of the army; that
discontent has increased to the highest pitch, and that it is
impossible to believe that the government can stand much longer
against the universal dislike. You will add, that the Emperor is the
only object of the regret and hope of the nation. He, in his wisdom,
will decide what he ought to do."
The Emperor became silent and pensive; and, after a long meditation,
he said, "I will reflect upon it; I will keep you with me. Come here
to-morrow at eleven o'clock."
On leaving the Emperor, I met the Grand Marshal, who said, "the
Emperor has detained you a long time. I am in terror lest this
interview should have been noticed. We are surrounded by English
spies. The slightest indiscretion might cost us dear. I do not ask you
to relate to me any thing which was reserved for the Emperor; but if,
without violating your duty, you could give me any details relating to
France, you would be doing me a great favour. We hear nothing of what
is going forward, except from the journals and a few commercial
travellers; and the intelligence which we thus obtain is so trifling
and so contradictory, that we do not know what to make of it."--"I can
satisfy you, Monsieur le Marechal, and without acting indiscreetly:
what I have told to the Emperor is known to all France. Discontent is
at its greatest height, and the royal government is on its last
legs."--"I cannot tell what futurity promises to us; but whatever our
fate may be, we cannot be worse off than we are at present. Our
resources are dwindling away daily; we are becoming home-sick. If we
were not a little upheld by hope, I really do not know what would
become of us. Has the Emperor allowed you to remain with us?"--"Yes,
Monsieur le Marechal."--"I give you joy, but I pity you. There is no
happiness out of one's own country. I do not regret having followed
the Emperor--this step was dictated to me by my duty and my gratitude;
but I regret France, like an infant who has lost its mother; like a
lover who has lost his mistress." The Grand Marshal's eyes were filled
with tears; he pressed my hand affectionately, and then said, "Come
and breakfast with us to-morrow morning. I will introduce you to my
wife; it will be as good as a fete to her when she has an opportunity
of receiving a Frenchman, and above all, a true Frenchman."
It was soon known all over the town, that a Frenchman had arrived from
the continent. My inn was besieged by a crowd of officers and
grenadiers, who overwhelmed me with inquiries after their friends and
relations. They seemed to think that I must be acquainted with every
living creature in France. Many inquired respecting the state of
public affairs. I evaded their interrogatories, by declaring that I
had quitted France five months since.
I waited on the Grand Marshal according to his invitation. He resided
in one wing of the building occupied by the municipality. In his
apartment, there was hardly any thing to be seen except the four
walls. He took notice that I was surveying its appearance.--"You are
contemplating our misery," said he: "Perhaps it contrasts itself with
the opinion which you may have formed respecting our situation. It is
supposed throughout Europe, that the Emperor carried off immense
treasures; but his camp-plate, his camp bed, and a few broken down
horses, are the only objects which he has preserved, or which he
wished to preserve. Like Saladin, he could cause an outcry to be made
at his door, whilst he exposes our tatters,--behold all that Napoleon
the Great, the conqueror of the universe, has retained from his
conquests!"
The General was as good as his word: he introduced me to Madame la
Marechale. I was enchanted by her manners and her amiability. Our
conversation turned upon France and the Isle of Elba, the present and
the future; and on quitting Madame Bertrand, I did not know what I
ought most to admire--the lively graces of her mind, or the dignity
and energy of her character.
At eleven o'clock I attended, to present myself to the Emperor. They
made me wait in his saloon on the ground floor. The striped silk
hangings were half worn out and faded; the carpet was threadbare, and
patched in several places; a few shabby arm chairs completed the
furniture of the apartment. I thought upon the splendour of the
imperial palaces, and I drew a deep and melancholy sigh. The Emperor
arrived: he had assumed a degree of calmness in his manner, which was
belied by his eyes. It was easy to see that he had been violently
agitated. "Sir," said he, "I declared to you yesterday, that I
retained you in my service. I repeat the same to you to-day. From this
instant you belong to me, and I hope you will fulfil your duties
towards me like a good and faithful subject: you swear that you
will--is it not so?"--"Yes, Sire, I swear."--"That's right." After a
pause, "I had foreseen the crisis to which France would come, but I
did not think that things were so ripe. It was my intention not to
interfere any longer in political affairs. The intelligence which you
have brought to me has changed my resolutions. I have caused the
misfortunes of France; therefore I must remove them: but before I
commit myself, I wish to have a thorough knowledge of the state of
our affairs. Sit down: repeat to me all that you told me yesterday; I
like to hear you."
Re-assured by these words, and by a look full of kindness and
benignity, I abandoned myself without reserve to all the inspirations
of my heart and soul. The picture which I drew of the sufferings and
hopes of the nation, which I presented to the Emperor, was so touching
and so animated, that he was astonished. "You are a noble young
fellow," said he, "you have truly the soul of a Frenchman; but are you
not carried away by your imagination?"--"No, Sire; the recital which I
have made to your Majesty is quite faithful. I may have expressed
myself with warmth, because I cannot express my feelings otherwise;
but all that I have told you is exact and true. Under such important
circumstances, I should have thought it a crime to substitute the
inspirations of my imagination in the place of truth."--"You therefore
think that France awaits her redemption from me; that I shall be
received as a deliverer."--"Yes, Sire; I will even say more: the royal
government is so exceedingly hateful and disgusting to the French, the
government weighs so very heavily on the nation and the army, that not
only your Majesty, but any body else who would endeavour to liberate
the French would find them disposed to second him."--Napoleon (with
dignity): "Repeat that to me again."--"Yes, Sire, I do repeat it. The
French are so wearied, and degraded, and incensed, by the
anti-national yoke of the emigrants and the priests, that they are
ready to join any one who will promise to deliver them."--"But if I
were to disembark in France, is there not reason to fear that the
patriots may be massacred by the emigrants and the chouans?"--"No,
Sire, I do not think so; we are the most numerous and the bravest
party."--"Yes, but they may heap you in the prisons, and cut your
throats."--"Sire, the people will not let them do that."--"I hope you
may not be deceived; to be sure, I shall get to Paris so speedily,
that they won't have time to consider where they are to hide their
heads. I shall be there as soon as the news of my disembarkation....
Yes," the Emperor continued, after taking a few steps, "I have
resolved.... It was I who gave the Bourbons to France, and it is I who
must rid France of them.... I will set off.... The enterprise is vast,
it is difficult, it is dangerous, but it is not beyond me. On great
occasions fortune has never abandoned me.... I shall set off, but not
alone; I won't run the risk of allowing myself to be collared by the
gensdarmes. I will depart with my sword, my Polanders, my grenadiers
... all France is on my side. I belong to France; and for her I will
sacrifice my repose, my blood, my life, with the greatest joy." After
this speech, the Emperor stopped; his eyes sparkled with hope and
genius: his attitude announced energy, confidence, victory; he was
grand, he was beautiful, he was adorable!--he resumed his discourse,
and said, "Do you think that they will dare to wait for me?"--"No,
Sire."--"I don't think so, either: they will quake when they hear the
thunder of my name; and they will know that they can only escape me by
a speedy flight. But what will be the conduct of the national guards?
Do you think they will fight for them?"--"I think, Sire, that the
national guards will remain neutral."--"Even that's a great deal; as
to their 'gardes du corps,' and their red regiments, I am not afraid
of them: they are either old men or boys: they will be frightened by
the mustachios of my grenadiers. I will make my grenadiers hoist the
national flag;" lifting up his voice and his hand: "I will appeal to
my old soldiers; I will speak to them. None of them will refuse to
hear the voice of their old general.... It is certain that the
soldiers cannot hesitate to choose between the white flag and the
tricoloured flag; between me, by whom they have been covered with
rewards and glory, and the Bourbons, who wish to dishonour them....
And the Marshals, what will they do?"--"The Marshals, who are full of
money and titles, have nothing to wish for but repose. They would fear
to compromise their existence by embracing a doubtful party; and
perhaps they will continue merely spectators of the crisis. Perhaps
even the fear lest your Majesty may possibly punish them for their
defection or treason in 1814 may induce them to adhere to the
king."--"I will punish no one. Do you take me rightly? Tell M. ****
clearly, that I will forget every thing. We have all reason to
reproach each other."--"Sire, I will tell him so with the greatest
joy. This assurance will completely gain all opinions over to your
side; because even amongst your partisans there are men who dread your
return; lest you should revenge yourself."--"Yes, I know that it is
thought that I am revengeful, and even sanguinary; that I am
considered as a kind of ogre, as a man-eater. They are mistaken: I
will make every one do his duty, and I will be obeyed; and that's
all. A weak sovereign is a calamity to his subjects. If he allows
criminals and traitors to fancy that he does not know how to punish,
there is no longer any security either for the state or for
individuals. More crimes are prevented than repressed by severity. A
sovereign must govern by his head, and not by his heart. Yet, tell
X*** that I except Talleyrand, Augereau, and the Duke of Ragusa, out
of the general pardon. They caused all our misfortunes. The country
must be revenged."--"But why exclude them, Sire? Is there not reason
to fear that this exclusion may deprive you of the fruits of your
clemency, and may even raise doubts as to your sincerity in
future?"--"It would be much more exposed to doubt were I to pardon
them."--"But, Sire...."--"Don't you trouble your head about it ...
what is the strength of the army?"--"Sire, I do not know; I only know
that it has been much weakened by desertion and by discharges, and
that few of the regiments consist of more than three hundred
men."--"So much the better; those who are good for nothing have
probably left the army; the good soldiers will have remained. Do you
know the names of the officers who command the maritime districts, and
the eighth division?"--"No, Sire."--Napoleon (out of temper), "Why
did not X*** give you that information?"--"Sire, both M. X*** and
myself were far from supposing that your Majesty would immediately
embrace the glorious resolution of re-appearing in France; besides
which, he might believe, according to the common report, that your
agents did not allow you to remain in ignorance of any circumstance
which might interest you."--"I do know that the newspapers gave out
that I had agents.... It is an idle story. It is true that I sent some
of my people to France, in order to learn what was going on; but they
stole my money, and only treated me with the gabble of the canaille.
C**** has been to see me, but he knew nothing. You are the first
person from whom I have ascertained the situation of France and the
Bourbons under all its extensive bearings. Had it not been for you, I
should never have known that the hour of my return had struck. Had it
not been for you, they would have left me here to dig in my garden. I
have received--I do not exactly know from what quarter--the
description of certain assassins, hired against me; and one or two
anonymous letters besides--all from the same hand, in which I was told
to remain quiet, that the embroideries were coming into fashion, and
other nonsense in the same style; but that's all. It is not upon such
data that one is induced to attempt a crash. But how do you think
foreigners will like my return: there is the great question?"--"Foreign
nations, Sire, have been compelled to confederate against us in order
to protect themselves; allow me to say it...."--"Speak out, speak
out."--"In order to protect themselves against the effects of your
ambition, and the abuse of your strength. Now that Europe has
recovered her independence, and that France has ceased to be
dangerous, foreign powers will probably be unwilling to run the risk
of a new war, which may end by restoring to us that ascendancy which
we have lost."--"If the allied sovereigns were at home in their
capitals they would certainly consider the matter twice before they
would take the field again; but they are yet face to face; and it is
to be feared that war may become an affair of vanity. Do you think it
is true that they are on ill terms with each other?"--"Yes, Sire, it
appears that discord reigns in the congress; that each of the great
powers wishes to seize the largest share of the booty."--"It appears,
also, that their subjects are discontented: is it not so?"--"Yes,
Sire; kings and people, every thing seems to unite in our favour. The
Saxons, the Genoese, the Belgians, the inhabitants of the banks of the
Rhine, the Polanders, all refuse the new sovereigns to whom they are
to be given. Italy, tired of the avarice and the grossness of the
Austrians, pants for the moment of withdrawing from their sovereignty.
Experience has taught the King of Naples that you are his surest
protector, and he will assist the rising of the Italians whenever you
wish it. The princes of the confederation of the Rhine, warned by the
example of Saxony, will become the allies of your majesty after the
first victory. Prussia and Russia will sit quiet, if you will only
allow them to retain their new acquisitions. The Emperor of Austria,
who has every thing to fear from Russia and Prussia, and nothing to
hope for from the King of France, will easily consent, if you only
guarantee Italy to him, to allow you to do what you think best with
the Bourbons. In short, all the powers of Europe, England only
excepted, are more or less interested in not declaring themselves
against
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/22345