I left Paris on the 23rd of May. One circ.u.mstance alone is worthy of notice in my journey--the facility with which I accomplished it. It is true there were many police restrictions on the roads and along the frontier; but the greater part of the agents were neither zealous nor particular in enforcing them. Their speech, their silence, and their looks, implied a kind of understood permission and tacit connivance.
More than one official face appeared to say to the unknown traveller, "Pa.s.s on quickly," as if they dreaded making a mistake, or damaging a useful work by interfering with its supposed design. Having arrived at Ghent, I called first on the men I knew, and whose views corresponded with my own, MM. de Jaucourt, Louis, Beugnot, de Lally-Tolendal, and Mounier. I found them all faithful to the cause of the Const.i.tution, but sad as exiles, and anxious as advisers without repose in banishment; for they had to combat incessantly with the odious or absurd pa.s.sions and plans of the spirit of reaction.
The same facts furnish to different parties the most opposite conclusions and arguments; the catastrophe, which again attached some more firmly than ever to the principles and politics of the Charter, was to others the sentence of the Charter; and a convincing proof that nothing but a return to the old system could save the monarchy. I need not repeat the details, given to me by my friends, of the advice with which the counter-revolutionists and partisans of absolutism beset the King; for in the idleness that succeeds misfortune, men give themselves up to dreams, and helpless pa.s.sion engenders folly. The King stood firm, and agreed with his const.i.tutional advisers. The Report on the state of France presented to him by M. de Chateaubriand a few days before we arrived, in the name of the whole Council, and which had just been published in the "Moniteur of Ghent," contained an eloquent exposition of the liberal policy acknowledged by the monarch. But the party thus rejected were not disposed to yield; they surrounded the King they were unable to control, and found their strongest roots in his own family and bosom friends. The Count d"Artois was their ostensible chief, and M. de Blacas their discreet but steady ally. Through them they hoped to gain a victory as necessary as it was difficult.
I requested the Duke de Duras to demand for me a private audience of the King. The King received me the next day, June 1st, and detained me nearly an hour. I have no turn for the minute and settled parade of such interviews; I shall therefore only relate of this, and of the impressions which it produced on me, what still appears to be worthy of remembrance.
Two points have remained strongly imprinted upon my memory--the impotence and dignity of the King. There was in the aspect and att.i.tude of this old man, seated immovably and as if nailed to his arm-chair, a haughty serenity, and, in the midst of his feebleness, a tranquil confidence in the power of his name and rights, which surprised and touched me. What I had to say could not fail to be displeasing to him; and from respect, not calculation, I began with what was agreeable: I spoke of the royalist feeling which day by day exhibited itself more vehemently in Paris. I then related to him several anecdotes and couplets of songs, in corroboration of this. Such light pa.s.sages entertained and pleased him, as men are gratified with humorous recitals, who have no sources of gaiety within themselves.
I told him that the hope of his return was general. "But what is grievous, Sire, is that, while believing in the re-establishment of the monarchy, there is no confidence in its duration." "Why is this?" I continued; "when the great artisan of revolution is no longer there, monarchy will become permanent; it is clear that, if Bonaparte returns to Elba, it will only be to break out again; but let him be disposed of, and there will be an end to revolutions also.--People cannot thus flatter themselves, Sire; they fear something beyond Bonaparte, they dread the weakness of the royal government; its wavering between old and new ideas, between past and present interests, and they fear the disunion, or at least the incoherence of its ministers."
The King made no reply. I persisted, and mentioned M. de Blacas. I said that I was expressly charged by men whom the King knew to be old, faithful, and intelligent servants, to represent to him the mistrust which attached itself to that name, and the evil that would result from it to himself. "I will fulfil all that I have promised in the Charter; names are not concerned with that; France has nothing to do with the friends I entertain in my palace, provided no act emanates from them injurious to the country? Speak to me of more serious causes of uneasiness." I entered into some details, and touched on various points of party intrigues and menaces. I also spoke to the King, of the Protestants in the south, of their alarms, of the violence even of which, in some instances, they had already been the objects. "This is very bad," said he: "I will do all I can to stop it; but I cannot prevent everything,--I cannot, at the same time, be a liberal and an absolute king." He questioned me upon several recent occurrences, and respecting some members of the Imperial Administration. "There are two, Sire, who, knowing that I was about to seek an audience of the King, have requested me to mention their names, and to a.s.sure him of their devotion." "Who are they?"--"The Arch-chancellor and M. Mole." "For M. Mole, I rely upon him, and am glad of his support; I know his worth.
As to M. Cambaceres, he is one of those whom I neither ought nor wish to hear named." I paused there. I was not ignorant that at that time the King was in communication with Fouche, a much more objectionable regicide than Cambaceres; but I was a little surprised that the secret relations caused by pressing emergency did not prevent him from maintaining aloud, and as a general theory, a line of conduct most natural under his circ.u.mstances. He was certainly far from foreseeing the disgust that would ensue from his connection with the Duke of Otranto. He dismissed me with some commonplace words of kindness, leaving on me the impression of a sensible and liberal mind, outwardly imposing, shrewd with individuals, careful of appearances, thinking little, and not profoundly informed, and almost as incapable of the errors which destroy, as of the great strokes which establish the future of royal dynasties.
I then visited M. de Blacas. He had evinced some prepossession against me. "What brings this young man here?" said he to Baron d"Eckstein, Commissary-General of Police to the King of the Netherlands, at Ghent.
"He comes from I know not who, with some mission that I am ignorant of, to the King." He was fully acquainted both with my mission and my friends. However, he received me with perfect civility, and I must add with honourable frankness, inquiring what they said at Paris, and why they were so incensed against him. He spoke to me even of his differences with the Abbe de Montesquiou, complaining of the sallies and whims which had embroiled them to the detriment of the King"s service. I replied with equal candour; and his bearing during the whole of our interview was dignified, with a slight degree of reserve, expressing more surprise than irritation. I find in some notes written after I left him, this sentence:--"I am much mistaken if his mistakes do not chiefly proceed from the mediocrity of his intellect."
The situation of M. de Chateaubriand at Ghent was singular. A member of the King"s Council, he brilliantly exposed its policy in official publications, and defended them in the "Moniteur of Ghent" with the same attractive power; but he was dissatisfied with everybody, and no one placed much confidence in him. I believe that neither then nor later did the King or the different Cabinets understand M. de Chateaubriand, or sufficiently appreciate his concurrence or hostility. He was, I admit, a troublesome ally; for he aspired to all things, and complained of all.
On a level with the rarest spirits and most exalted imaginations, it was his chimera to fancy himself equal to the greatest masters in the art of government, and to feel bitterly hurt if he were not looked upon as the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton. Prudent men did not lend themselves to this complaisant idolatry; but they forgot too much what, either as friend or enemy, he to whom they refused it was worth. They might, by paying homage to his genius and satisfying his vanity, have lulled to rest his ambitious dreams; and if they had not the means of contenting him, they ought in either case, from prudence as well as from grat.i.tude, not only to have humoured, but to have gained him over completely to their side. He was one of those towards whom ingrat.i.tude was as dangerous as unjust; for they resent pa.s.sionately, and know how to revenge without treachery. He lived at Ghent in great intimacy with M. Bertin, and a.s.sumed thenceforward that influence over the "Journal des Debats" which he afterwards so powerfully employed. Notwithstanding the cordiality of our first acquaintance, there had been for some time a considerable coolness between us. In 1814 he was discontented with, and spoke ill of the Abbe de Montesquiou and his friends. I was nevertheless equally surprised at and sorry for the injustice and error committed in thinking so little of one they used so much, and I regretted not meeting him oftener, and on a more amicable footing.
In the midst of these discussions, not only of principles and parties, but of private interests and coteries, we waited, at a distance from France, and scarcely knowing how to occupy our minds or time, the issue of the struggle between Napoleon and Europe;--a most painful situation, which I endured to serve the cause I believed and have never ceased to believe just, though I hourly felt its complicated vexations. I shall not linger here to describe them; nothing is more repugnant to my nature than to volunteer a display of my own feelings, especially when I am well aware that many, who listen, cannot or will not understand or believe me. I care little for mistake or invective; either is the natural condition of public life: but I do not feel called upon to enter into useless controversies in my own defence; I know how to wait for justice without demanding it.
The battle of Waterloo terminated our pa.s.sive anxiety. The King quitted Ghent on the 22nd of June, urged by his trustiest friends, and by his own judgment, not to lose a moment in placing himself between divided France and foreign invasion. I set out the next day with M. Mounier, and on the same evening we rejoined the King at Mons, where he had paused in his journey.
Then burst forth, through the agency of new actors, and by contrivances still unexplained, the _denoument_ that I had been despatched to accomplish--the fall of M. de Blacas. I am not disposed to discuss the various accounts given by several who were witnesses of or interested in the event; I shall simply relate what I myself saw on the spot, as I find it detailed in a letter written at Cambray, six days afterwards,[10] to the person to whom, in the absence of immediate communication, I had the pleasure of relating all that occurred:--
"As we entered Mons (M. Mounier and I), we were told that M. de Blacas had been dismissed, and was going as amba.s.sador to Naples; but our surprise was great when we also learned that M. de Talleyrand, who had lately left Vienna for Brussels, to be within reach of coming events, and had arrived at Mons a few hours after the King, had at the same time tendered his resignation; that the King, while refusing to accept it, had received M. de Talleyrand himself coldly, and that he had set out again for Brussels, while, contrary to his advice, the King repaired to Cateau-Cambresis, at that moment the head-quarters of the English army.
We understood nothing whatever of these conflicting incidents, and our uneasiness equalled our surprise. We have since been everywhere, we have seen everybody,--those of our friends who preceded us to Mons, and the foreign ministers who followed the King--MM. de Jaucourt, Louis, Beugnot, de Chateaubriand, Pozzo di Borgo, de Vincent;--and, between half confidences, restrained anger, deceptive smiles, and sincere regrets, we have arrived at last at a tolerably clear understanding of the whole matter. The little court of the Count d"Artois, knowing that M. de Talleyrand advised the King not to hurry, and that the Duke of Wellington, on the contrary, recommended him to advance rapidly into France, thought nothing could be better than to drive away both M. de Blacas and M. de Talleyrand, and to separate the King from his const.i.tutional advisers, as well as from his favourite, by inducing him to set out quickly for the head-quarters of the English army, surrounded only by the partisans of _Monsieur_, from whom they hoped he would select his ministers.
"Our friends were much excited, and the foreigners greatly displeased.
The latter demanded in whom they could have confidence with regard to the French question, and with whom they should treat in such a crisis?
M. de Talleyrand had returned from Vienna with a great reputation for ability and success; in the eyes of Europe he represented France and the King. The Austrian Minister had just said to him at Brussels, "I am ordered to consult you on every occasion, and to be guided entirely by your advice." He himself haughtily maintained his discontent, and sharply repulsed those who would have persuaded him to rejoin the King.
After six hours of rather stormy conversation, it was agreed that Pozzo di Borgo should repair to Cateau, and persuade the Duke of Wellington to take some step which should put an end to this strange misunderstanding; and that MM. de Jaucourt, Louis, and Beugnot should at the same time say to the King, that the men in whom he appeared to confide entertained ideas and projects so diametrically opposed to theirs, that it was impossible they could serve him usefully, and therefore requested permission to retire. It is probable that reflections and measures in conformity with these resolutions had already taken place at Cateau; for on the morning of the 25th, at the same time that we received news of the occurrences at Paris, the abdication of Napoleon, and the emba.s.sy of the Commissioners to the Allied Sovereigns, a letter arrived at Mons, from the Duke of Wellington to M. de Talleyrand, couched, as I have been a.s.sured, in these exact terms:--
""I regret much that you have not accompanied the King to this place; it is I who have earnestly requested him to enter France at the same time with ourselves. If I could have told you the motives which sway me in this matter, I have no doubt that you would have given the King the same advice. I trust that you will come to hear them." M. de Talleyrand decided upon setting out instantly; and we determined to accompany him.
We rejoined the King here on the 26th. It was high time; for already a proclamation, dated from Cateau, drawn up, it is said, by M. Dambray, gave a false colouring to the re-entrance of his Majesty. We have hastened to subst.i.tute another, of which M. Beugnot is the princ.i.p.al author, and which prognosticates a wholesome policy. The King signed it without hesitation. It appeared yesterday, to the great satisfaction of the public of Cambray. I hope it may produce a similar effect in all other quarters."
We indeed hoped and believed that the end of the great crisis which had overthrown France, as well as the smaller one which had agitated the immediate circle of royalty, was at hand. On all sides affairs appeared to tend towards the same issue. The King was in France; a moderate and national line of policy prevailed in his councils, and animated his words. A feeling of loyalty displayed itself everywhere during his progress, not only with his old party, but amongst the ma.s.ses; every hand was raised towards him, as to a plank of safety in a shipwreck. The people care little for consistency. At this time I saw, in the northern departments, the same popularity surround the exiled King and the vanquished army. Napoleon had abdicated in Paris, and, notwithstanding a few unworthy alternations of dejection and feverish excitement, of resignation and momentary energy, he was evidently incapable of renewing the struggle. The Chamber of Representatives, which, from its first inst.i.tution, had shown itself unfavourable to the Imperial system, and opposed to revolutionary excesses, appeared to be earnestly occupied in threading a perilous defile, by avoiding all violence and every irrevocable engagement. Popular pa.s.sion sometimes murmured, but suffered itself to be easily restrained, and even stopped voluntarily, as if unaccustomed to action or dominion. The army, the scattered corps of which had successively re-united round Paris, had given itself up to patriotic fervour, and, together with France, had plunged into an abyss to prove its devotion and avenge its injuries: but amongst its oldest and most ill.u.s.trious chiefs, some--such as Gouvion St. Cyr, Macdonald, and Oudinot--had refused to join Napoleon, and openly espoused the Royal cause; others--like Ney, Davoust, Soult, and Ma.s.sena--protested with stern candour against fatal delusions, considering that their well-tried courage ent.i.tled them to utter melancholy truths, to offer sage advice, and to repress, even by the sacrifice of party credit, military excitement or popular disorder; others, in fine, like Drouot, with an influence conferred by true courage and virtue, maintained discipline in the army in the midst of the mortifications of the retreat behind the Loire, and secured its obedience to the authority of a detested civil power. After so many mistakes and misfortunes, and in the midst of all differences of opinion and situation, there existed still a spontaneous desire and a general effort to preserve France from irreparable errors and total ruin.
But tardy wisdom does not avail, and, even when they wish to become prudent, political genius is wanting to those nations who are not accustomed to decide their own affairs or their own destiny. In the deplorable state into which the enterprise of an heroic and chimerical egotism had thrown France, there was evidently only one line of conduct to pursue,--to recognize Louis XVIII., to accept his liberal concessions, and to act in concert with him while treating with the foreign Powers. This was absolutely necessary; for the most limited mind could foresee that the return of the House of Bourbon was an inevitable, and all but an accomplished fact. Such a course became also a duty, to promote peace and to afford the best means of counteracting the evils of invasion; for Louis XVIII. could alone repel them with any show of authority. An auspicious future was thus opened to liberty; for reason whispered, and experience demonstrated, that, after what had pa.s.sed in France since 1789, despotism could never more be attempted by the princes of the House of Bourbon--an insurmountable necessity compelled them to adopt defined and const.i.tutional government,--if they resorted to extremes, their strength would prove unequal to success. To accept without hesitation or delay the second restoration, and to place the King, of his own accord, between France and the rest of Europe, became the self-evident dictate of patriotism and sound policy.
Not only was this left undone, but every endeavour was used to make it appear that the Restoration was exclusively the work of foreign interference, and to bring upon France, in addition to her military defeat, a political and diplomatic overthrow. It was not independence of the Empire, or good intentions towards the country, that were wanting in the Chamber of the Hundred Days, but intelligence and resolution. It neither lent itself to imperial despotism nor revolutionary violence; it was not the instrument of either of the extreme parties,--it applied itself honestly to preserve France, on the brink of that abyss towards which they had driven her; but it could only pursue a line of negative policy, it tacked timidly about before the harbour, instead of boldly entering,--closing its eyes when it approached the narrow channel, submitting, not from confidence, but from imbecility, to the blindness or infatuation of the old or new enemies by whom the King was surrounded, and appearing sometimes, from weakness itself, to consent to combinations which in reality it tried to elude;--at one moment proclaiming Napoleon II., and at another any monarch whom the sovereign people might please to select.
To this fruitless vacillation of the only existing public authority, one of the most fatally celebrated actors of the worst times of the Revolution, Fouche, owed his importance and ephemeral success.
When honest men fail to understand or execute the designs of Providence, dishonesty undertakes the task. Under the pressure of circ.u.mstances, and in the midst of general weakness, corrupt, sagacious, and daring spirits are ever at hand, who perceive at once what may happen, or what may be attempted, and make themselves the instruments of a triumph to which they have no natural claim, but of which they a.s.sume the credit, to appropriate the fruits. Such a man was the Duke of Otranto during the Hundred Days,--a revolutionist transformed into a grandee; and desirous of being consecrated in this double character by the ancient royalty of France, he employed, to accomplish his end, all the cleverness and audacity of a reckless intriguer more clear-sighted and sensible than his a.s.sociates. Perhaps also--for justice ought to retain its scruples even towards those who have none themselves--perhaps a desire to save his country from violence and useless suffering may have had some share in the series of treasons and imperturbable changes of side, by means of which, while deceiving and playing alternately with Napoleon, La Fayette, and Carnot, the Empire, the Republic, and the regicidal Convention, Fouche gained the time that he required to open for himself the doors of the King"s cabinet, while he opened the gates of Paris to the King.
Louis XVIII. offered some resistance, but, notwithstanding what he had said to me at Ghent respecting Cambaceres, I doubt whether he objected strongly. He was one of those who are dignified from habit and decorum rather than from a real and powerful emotion of the soul; and propriety disappeared before emergency. He had, as vouchers for the necessities of the case, two authorities who were the best calculated to influence his decision and uphold his honour; the Duke of Wellington and the Count d"Artois both urged him to accept Fouche as a minister:--Wellington, to secure an easy return for the King, and also that he himself, and England with him, might remain the princ.i.p.al author of the Restoration by promptly terminating the war before Paris, where he feared to be compromised through the violent hatred of the Prussians; the Count d"Artois, with impatient levity, always ready to promise and agree, and already entangled through his most active confidant, M. de Vitrolles, in the snare which Fouche had spread for the Royalists on every side.
I do not believe in the necessity which they urged upon the King. Fouche had no control over Paris; the army had retired; the Federates were more noisy than powerful; the Chamber of Representatives consoled themselves, by discussing a const.i.tution, for not having dared or known how to form a government; no party was either able or disposed to arrest effectually the tide which carried the King along. A little less eagerness, and a little more determination, would have spared him a sad dishonour. By waiting a few days he would have incurred the risk, not of fatal resolutions or violence, but merely of the temporary continuance of disorder and alarm. Necessity presses upon people as well as on kings: that with which Fouche armed himself to become minister to Louis XVIII.
was fact.i.tious and ephemeral; that which brought Louis XVIII. back to the Tuileries was real, and became hourly more urgent. There was no occasion for him to receive the Duke of Otranto into his cabinet at Arnouville; he might have remained there patiently, for they would soon have sought him. I thought thus at the time, after having pa.s.sed two days in Paris, where I arrived on the 3rd of July, when the manoeuvres of Fouche were following their course. All that I subsequently saw and heard tended to confirm me in this opinion.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: I owe it to myself to repeat here the retractation of an error (I am not disposed to use any other word) entertained in regard to my connection with the Hundred Days, and the part I took at that period.
This retractation, which appeared thirteen years ago in the "Moniteur Universel" of the 4th of February, 1844, is couched in the following terms:--"Several journals have recently said or implied that M. Guizot, the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was Secretary-General to the Ministry of the Interior in 1814 and 1815, had retained his office during the Hundred Days, under General Count Carnot, appointed Minister of the Interior by the Imperial decree of the 20th of March, 1815; that he had signed the Additional Act, and that he had been subsequently dismissed. One of these journals has invoked the testimony of the "Moniteur." These a.s.sertions are utterly false. M. Guizot, now Minister of Foreign Affairs, had, on the 20th of March, 1815, quitted the department of the Interior; and by an Imperial decree of the 23rd of the same month, his office of Secretary-General was conferred upon Baron Ba.s.set de Chateaubourg, formerly Prefect (see the "Bulletin des Lois,"
no. v. p. 34). The notice in the "Moniteur" of the 14th of May, 1815, page 546, did not refer to M. Francois Guizot, but to M. Jean-Jacques Guizot, head-clerk at that time in the Ministry of the Interior, who was actually dismissed from his office in the course of May 1815."
Notwithstanding this official refutation, founded on official acts, and published in 1844 in the "Moniteur," where the error had originated, the same mis-statement appeared in 1847, in the "History of the Two Restorations," by M. Vaulabelle (2nd edition, vol. ii. p. 276), and again in 1851, in the "History of the Restoration," by M. de Lamartine (vol. iv. p. 15).]
[Footnote 10: June 29th, 1815.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHAMBER OF 1815.
1815-1816.
FALL OF M. DE TALLEYRAND AND FOUCHe.--FORMATION OF THE DUKE DE RICHELIEU"S CABINET.--MY CONNECTION AS SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE WITH M. DE MARBOIS, KEEPER OF THE GREAT SEAL.--MEETING AND ASPECT OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.--INTENTIONS AND ATt.i.tUDE OF THE OLD ROYALIST FACTION.--FORMATION AND COMPOSITION OF A NEW ROYALIST PARTY.--STRUGGLE OF CLa.s.sES UNDER THE CLOAK OF PARTIES.--PROVISIONAL LAWS.--BILL OF AMNESTY.--THE CENTRE BECOMES THE GOVERNMENT PARTY, AND THE RIGHT THE OPPOSITION.--QUESTIONS UPON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE CHURCH.--STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT BEYOND THE CHAMBERS.--INSUFFICIENCY OF ITS RESISTANCE TO THE SPIRIT OF REACTION.--THE DUKE OF FELTRI AND GENERAL BERNARD.--TRIAL OF MARSHAL NEY.--CONTROVERSY BETWEEN M. DE VITROLLES AND ME.--CLOSING OF THE SESSION.--MORTIFICATIONS IN THE CABINET.--M. LAINe MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.--I LEAVE THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE AND ENTER THE STATE COUNCIL AS MASTER OF REQUESTS.--THE CABINET ENTERS INTO CONTESTS WITH THE RIGHT-HAND PARTY.--M. DECAZES.--POSITION OF MESSRS. ROYER-COLLARD AND DE SERRE.--OPPOSITION OF M. DE CHaTEAUBRIAND.--THE COUNTRY RISES AGAINST THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.--EFFORTS OF M. DECAZES TO BRING ABOUT A DISSOLUTION.--THE KING DETERMINES ON IT.--DECREE OF THE 5TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1816.
Three months had scarcely elapsed and neither Fouche nor M. de Talleyrand were any longer in the Ministry. They had fallen, not under the pressure of any new or unforeseen event, but by the evils connected with their personal situation, and their inapt.i.tude for the parts they had undertaken to play. M. de Talleyrand had effected a miracle at Vienna; by the treaty of alliance concluded on the 3rd January, 1815, between France, England, and Austria, he had put an end to the coalition formed against us in 1813, and separated Europe into two parties, to the advantage of France. But the event of the 20th of March had destroyed his work; the European coalition was again formed against the Emperor and against France, who had made herself, or had permitted herself to be made, the instrument of Napoleon. There was no longer a chance of breaking up this formidable alliance. The same feeling of uneasiness and mistrust of our faith, the same desire for a firm and lasting union, animated the sovereigns and the nations. They had speedily arranged at Vienna the questions which had threatened to divide them. In this fortified hostility against France the Emperor Alexander partic.i.p.ated, with extreme irritation towards the House of Bourbon and M. de Talleyrand, who had sought to deprive him of his allies. The second Restoration was no longer like the first, the personal glory and work of M. de Talleyrand; the honour was chiefly due to England and the Duke of Wellington. Instigated by self-love and policy, the Emperor Alexander arrived at Paris on the 10th of July, 1815, stern and angrily disposed towards the King and his advisers.
France and the King stood, nevertheless, in serious need of the goodwill of the Russian Emperor, encompa.s.sed as they were by the rancorous and eager ambition of Germany. Her diplomatists drew up the geographical chart of our territory, leaving out the provinces of which they desired to deprive us. Her generals undermined, to blow into the air, the monuments which recalled their defeats in the midst of their victories.
Louis XVIII. resisted with much dignity these acts of foreign barbarism; he threatened to place his chair of state upon the bridge of Jena, and said publicly to the Duke of Wellington, "Do you think, my Lord, that your Government would consent to receive me if I were again to solicit a refuge?" Wellington restrained to the utmost of his power the violence of Blucher, and remonstrated with him by arguments equally urgent and politic; but neither the dignity of the King, nor the amicable intervention of England were sufficient to curb the overweening pretensions of Germany. The Emperor Alexander alone could keep them within bounds. M. de Talleyrand sought to conciliate him by personal concessions. In forming his cabinet, he named the Duke de Richelieu, who was still absent, Minister of the Royal Household, while the Ministry of the Interior was held in reserve for Pozzo di Borgo, who would willingly have left the official service of Russia to take part in the Government of France. M. de Talleyrand placed much faith in the power of temptations; but, in this instance, they were of no avail. The Duke de Richelieu, probably in concert with the King himself, refused; Pozzo di Borgo did not obtain, or dared not to solicit, the permission of his master to become, once more, a Frenchman. I saw him frequently, and that mind, at once quick and decisive, bold and restless, felt keenly its doubtful situation, and with difficulty concealed its perplexities. The Emperor Alexander maintained his cold reserve, leaving M. de Talleyrand powerless and embarra.s.sed in this arena of negotiation, ordinarily the theatre of his success.
The weakness of Fouche was different, and sprang from other causes. It was not that the foreign sovereigns and their ministers regarded him more favourably than they did M. de Talleyrand, for his admission into the King"s cabinet had greatly scandalized monarchical Europe; the Duke of Wellington alone persisted in still upholding him; but none amongst the foreigners either attacked him or appeared anxious for his downfall.
It was from within that the storm was raised against him. With a strangely frivolous presumption, he had determined to deliver up the Revolution to the King, and the King to the Revolution, relying upon his dexterity and boldness to a.s.sist him in pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing from camp to camp, and in governing one by the other, while alternately betraying both. The elections which took place at this period throughout France, signally falsified his hopes. In vain did he profusely employ agents, and circular addresses; neither obtained for him the slightest influence; the decided Royalists prevailed in nearly every quarter, almost without a struggle. It is our misfortune and our weakness, that in every great crisis the vanquished become as the dead. The Chamber of 1815 as yet appeared only in the distance, and already the Duke of Otranto trembled as though thunderstruck by the side of the tottering M. de Talleyrand. In this opposite and unequal peril, but critical for both, the conduct of these two men was very different. M. de Talleyrand proclaimed himself the patron of const.i.tutional monarchy, boldly and greatly organized as in England. Modifications conformable to the views of the Liberal party were in some instances immediately acceded to, and in others promised by the Charter. Young men were permitted to enter the Chamber of Deputies. Fourteen Articles relative to the const.i.tution of this Chamber were submitted for the inspection of the next Legislative a.s.sembly. The Peerage was made hereditary. The censorship, to which works under twenty printed sheets had been subjected, was abolished. A grand Privy Council, on important occasions, united the princ.i.p.al men of every party. It was neither the urgent necessity of the moment, nor prevailing public opinion, that imposed on restored royalty these important reforms: they were enacted by the Cabinet from a desire of encouraging free inst.i.tutions, and of giving satisfaction to the party,--I ought rather to say to the small section of enlightened and impatient spirits.
The real intentions and measures of Fouche were of a more personal nature. Violently menaced by the reaction in favour of royalty, he at first endeavoured to appease by feeding it. He consented to make himself the instrument of proscription against the very men who, but a short time before, were his agents, his confederates, his accomplices, his colleagues, and his friends. At the same time that he published memorials and circulars showing the necessity of clemency and forgetfulness of the past, he placed before the Royal Council a list of one hundred and ten names, to be excluded from all amnesty; and when strict inquiry had reduced this number to eighteen, subject to courts-martial, and to thirty-eight provisionally banished, he countersigned without hesitation the decree which condemned them. A few days afterwards, and upon his request, another edict revoked all the privileges. .h.i.therto accorded to the daily papers, imposed upon them the necessity of a new license, and subjected them to the censorship of a commission, in which several of the princ.i.p.al royalist writers, amongst others Messieurs Auger and Fievee, refused to sit under his patronage.
As little did the justice or national utility of his acts affect the Duke of Otranto in 1815, as in 1793; he was always ready to become, no matter at what cost, the agent of expediency. But when he saw that his severe measures did not protect himself, and perceived the rapidly approaching danger, he changed his tactics; the minister of the monarchical reaction became again the factious revolutionist. He caused to be secretly published and circulated, "Reports to the King," and the "Notes to the Foreign Ministers," less calculated to enlighten the authorities he addressed, than to prepare for himself arms and allies against the Government and the party, from which he saw that he was about to be excluded. He was of the number of those who try to make themselves feared, by striving to injure when they are no longer permitted to serve.
Neither the liberal reforms of M. de Talleyrand, nor the revolutionary menaces of the Duke of Otranto, warded off the danger which pressed on them. Notwithstanding their extraordinary abilities and long experience, both mistook the new aspect of the times, either not seeing, or not wishing to see, how little they were in unison with the contests which the Hundred Days had revived. The election of a Chamber decidedly Royalist, surprised them as an unexpected phenomenon; they both fell at its approach, and within a few days of each other; left, nevertheless, after their common downfall, in opposite positions. M. de Talleyrand retained credit; the King and his new Cabinet loaded him with gifts and royal favours; his colleagues during his short administration, Messieurs de Jaucourt, Pasquier, Louis and Gouvion St. Cyr, received signal marks of royal esteem, and retired from the scene of action as if destined to return. Having accepted the trifling and distant emba.s.sy to Dresden, Fouche hastened to depart, and left Paris under a disguise which he only changed when he reached the frontier, fearful of being seen in his native land, which he was fated never again to behold.
The Cabinet of the Duke de Richelieu entered upon office warmly welcomed by the King, and even by the party which had gained the ascendency through the present elections. It was indeed a new and thoroughly royalist Ministry. Its head, recently arrived in France, honoured by all Europe, and beloved by the Emperor Alexander, was to King Louis XVIII.
what the king himself was to France, the pledge of a more advantageous peace. Two of his colleagues, Messieurs Decazes and Dubouchage, had taken no part in public affairs previous to the Restoration. The four others, Messieurs Barbe-Marbois, de Vaublanc, Coretto, and the Duke of Feltri, had recently given proofs of strong attachment to the regal cause. Their union inspired hope without suspicion, in the public mind, as well as in that of the triumphant party. I was intimately acquainted with M. de Marbois; I had frequently met him at the houses of Madame de Rumford and Madame Suard. He belonged to that old France which, in a spirit of generous liberality, had adopted and upheld, with enlightened moderation, the principles most cherished by the France of the day. I held under him, in the capacity of a confidential friend, the post of Secretary-General to the Ministry of Justice, to which M. Pasquier, then keeper of the great seal, had nominated me under the Cabinet of M. de Talleyrand. Hardly was the new minister installed in office, when the Chamber of Deputies a.s.sembled, and in its turn established itself. It was almost exclusively Royalist. With considerable difficulty, a few men, members of other parties, had obtained entrance into its ranks. They found themselves in a state of perpetual discomfort, isolated and ill at ease, as though they were strangers of suspicious character; and when they endeavoured to declare themselves and explain their sentiments, they were roughly driven back into impotent silence. On the 23rd of October, 1815, in the debate on the Bill presented by M. Decazes for the temporary suspension of personal liberty, M. d"Argenson spoke of the reports which had been spread abroad respecting the ma.s.sacre of Protestants in the south. A violent tumult arose in contradiction of his statements; he explained himself with great reserve. "I name no facts," replied he, "I bring forward no charges; I merely say that vague and contradictory rumours have reached me; ... the very vagueness of these rumours calls for a report from the minister, on the state of the kingdom." M. d"Argenson was not only defeated in his object, and interrupted in his speech, but he was expressly called to order for having alluded to facts unfortunately too certain, but which the Government wished to smother up by silencing all debate on the question.
For the first time in five-and-twenty years, the Royalists saw themselves in the ascendant. Thoroughly believing that they had obtained a legitimate triumph, they indulged unreservedly in the enjoyment of power, with a mixture of aristocratic arrogance and new-born zeal, as men do when little accustomed to victory, and doubtful of the strength they are so eager to display.
Very opposite causes plunged the Chamber of 1815 into the extreme reaction which has stamped its historical character. In the first place, and above all others, may be named, the good and evil pa.s.sions of the Royalists, their moral convictions and personal resentments, their love of order and thirst for vengeance, their pride in the past and their apprehensions for the future, their determination to re-establish honour and respect for holy observances, their old attachments, their sworn pledges, and the gratification of lording it over their conquerors. To the violence of pa.s.sion was joined a prudent calculation of advantage.
To strengthen their party, and to advance individual fortunes, it was essential for the new rulers of France to possess themselves everywhere of place and power; therein lay the field to be worked, and the territory to be occupied, in order to reap the entire fruits of victory.
Finally must be added, the empire of ideas, more influential than is commonly supposed, and often exercising more power over men, without their being conscious of it, than prejudice or interest. After so many years of extraordinary events and disputes, the Royalists had, on all political and social questions, systematic views to realize, historical reminiscences to act upon, requirements of the mind to satisfy. They hastened to apply their hands to the work, believing the day at last arrived when they could, once more, a.s.sume in their own land, morally as well as physically, in thought and deed, the superiority which had so long been wrested from them.
As it happens in every great crisis of human a.s.sociations, these opposing principles in the reaction of 1815, had each its special and exclusively effective representative in the ranks of the Royalists. The party had their fighting champion, their political advocate, and their philosopher. M. de la Bourdonnaye led their pa.s.sions, M. de Villele their interests, and M. de Bonald their ideas; three men well suited to their parts, for they excelled respectively, the first in fiery attack, the second in prudent and patient manoeuvring, and the third in specious, subtle, and elevated exposition; and all three, although unconnected by any previous intimacy, applied their varied talents with unflinching perseverance to the common cause.
And what, after all, was the cause? What was, in reality, the end which the leaders of the party, apparently on the very verge of success, proposed to themselves? Had they been inclined to speak sincerely, they would have found it very difficult to answer the question. It has been said and believed by many, and probably a great portion of the Royalists imagined, in 1815, that their object was to abolish the Charter, and restore the old system: a commonplace supposition of puerile credulity; the battle-cry of the enemies, whether able or blind, of the Restoration. In the height of its most sanguine hopes, the Chamber of 1815 had formed no idea so extreme or audacious. Replaced as conquerors upon the field, not by themselves, but by the errors of their adversaries and the course of European events, the old Royalist party expected that the reverses of the Revolution and the Empire would bring them enormous advantages, and rest.i.tution; but they were yet undecided as to the use they should make of victory in the government of France, when they found themselves in the undisturbed possession of power. Their views were as unsettled and confused as their pa.s.sions were violent; above all things, they coveted victory, for the haughty pleasure of triumph itself, for the definitive establishment of the Restoration, and for their own predominance, by holding power at the centre of government, and throughout the departments by administration.