CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIRST RESTORATION (1814-5).

 

 

At 10 o’clock on the morning of March 31,1814, the rulers of Russia and Prussia rode into Paris. From early dawn a vast crowd had posted itself along the route from the Faubourg St Martin to the gardens of the Tuileries, and watched in sad and anxious silence the long procession of foreign troops. A few shouts saluted the noble presence of the Tsar, as he advanced along the Boulevards; but it was not till he reached the Boulevard des Italiens that he was made aware of the existence of a Bourbon party in Paris. Here loud cries of “VIvent les Bourbons” rent the air; and a party of some forty young nobles atoned by their noisy demonstration for the sullen tranquillity of the mob. Elsewhere there was hardly a token of royalist sympathy, or a clue to the real feelings of the capital. Yet a royalist emissary, Baron de Vitrolles, had assured the Tsar that Paris would declare in no uncertain tones for the Restoration.

In the absence of the Emperor of Austria, it lay with Alexander to determine the future government of France. It was a problem which he had for some time past been anxiously considering, yet without reaching a positive solution. He was clear that Napoleon was impossible; but his views as to the succession were still fluid and uncertain. Bernadotte and Eugene were thought of for a moment and waived aside. A wisely organised republic—so it was hinted to a royalist agent—might best accord with the French spirit; but, if the French did not care for a republic, there was the alternative of the Bourbons. Upon the qualities of the Bourbon cause the Tsar had pondered much, and he found them dubious. The princes would return embittered by misfortune; and, even if they could master their own resentments, the animosities of the emigres would prove less amenable to discipline. The army, the Protestants, the spirit of the new generation, would be opposed to them; and it was doubtful whether they could rely upon any substantial measure of support. It was true that royalism was making head in some regions of the south, and that the Due d’Angoulême had been received with acclamations in Bordeaux. But Alexander and Metternich were both impressed by the fact that in the wide area covered by the eastern campaign they had been unable to discern the faintest traces of a Bourbon party. Still, if France should declare for the old monarchy, Alexander was not prepared to oppose her choice. There was a statesman in Paris who had laid a plan for fixing the wavering purpose of the Tsar. Talleyrand, whose special gift it was to shine in a crisis or at a congress, had determined to have a direct and personal share in the political settlement. When the official world fled by command to Blois, he contrived to be turned back at the barrier, and thus to be left the sole person of importance in the capital. He had gauged Alexander, knew that he had impressed him once, and was confident that he would be able to impress him again. In an interview with Nesselrode he invited the Tsar to be his guest.

The Tsar accepted the proposal. “M. de Talleyrand,” he said, “I have determined to stay in your house because you have my confidence and that of my allies. We do not wish to determine anything before we have heard you. You know France, its needs and desires. Say what we ought to do, and we will do it.” Talleyrand replied, “ We can do everything with a principle. I propose to accept the principle of legitimacy, which recalls to the throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon.” The Tsar enumerated his doubts. Could France be detached from the chief for whose cause she had just fought with such desperate heroism ? Would she accept princes for whom she had manifested the most bitter hatred during a period of twenty years? Would the old monarchy receive any constitutional support from councils created by Napoleon and manned by his creatures? To these objections Talleyrand replied—and his assurances were confirmed by Dalberg, Louis, and de Pradt, who had been summoned to the conference—that, if once it were made clear that no peace or truce would be made with Bonaparte, the Legislative Councils would themselves invite the Bourbons. Alexander was deeply impressed. He walked up and down the room enlarging with emotion upon the horrors of war and the crimes of Napoleon, and then, turning to the King of Prussia and Prince Schwarzenberg, invited them to consent to a proclamation, which should pledge the Powers not to treat with Napoleon or any member of his family. Two hours afterwards the proclamation was posted ; and a regency under Marie- Louise was thus formally excluded from the sphere of possible solutions. On April 1 a Provisional Government was named, including, in the person of Montesquiou, at least one confidential friend of the banished King. Next day, the Senate, as pliant under Talleyrand as under Napoleon, decreed the deposition of the Emperor. The Legislature ratified and the law-courts acclaimed the decision. Sensible men saw that enough had been done for chivalry, and that only thus could France obtain liberty and peace.

Forty miles a-way, in the palace of Fontainebleau, sat Napoleon. It is true that the force around him did not exceed 86,000 men; but what might not desperate courage and skilful leadership effect ? At a council held on the morning of March 31, the Marshals advised a retreat to the south; but Napoleon, choosing as ever the more dangerous and attractive alternative, decided to manoeuvre before Paris and to oblige the enemy to give him battle. He ordered the corps of Marmont and Mortier, which had just evacuated the capital, to stop at Essonnes, where they would form his advance-guard in an aggressive movement. The allied generals, with a fickle population of 700,000 souls to watch, looked forward with anxiety to a reopening of the strife.

Alexander had often told his French friends that the army was the nation, and that nothing solid could be done unless the army were gained over. A few generals had sent in their adhesions to the Provisional Government;' and Dupont and Dessoles had accepted posts—the one as Minister of War, the other as Commandant of the National Guard; but the defection of individual generals was a matter of slight moment, so long as the army remained faithful to Napoleon. It was therefore determined to invite Marmont to put his troops at the disposition of the Government, and to march them into Normandy, where they might serve as the nucleus of a constitutional army. Marmont owed everything to Napoleon, and had fought with brilliant skill and courage during the last campaign; but he complained that he had been constantly placed in the most difficult and hazardous positions, and that he had been rebuked and insulted after the defeat of Laon. He knew that his surrender of Paris had spoilt Napoleon’s calculations; he was disillusioned and weary of war, and perhaps also desirous of playing a great role in history. Salving his conscience by the command of the Senate, and making an express stipulation that the personal safety and liberty of Napoleon should be respected, should he fall into the hands of the Allies, he promised to move his troops from Essonnes to Versailles in the night of April 4-5.

But meanwhile events were occurring at Fontainebleau, which threat­ened to put a new complexion upon affairs. On the morning of April 4, as Napoleon was preparing to strike his final blow, news came that the Senate had decreed his deposition. The general order was that headquarters were to be transferred to Ponthierry; and, after the midday parade, Napoleon retired to his room to make his last preparations for the march But the discontent of the Marshals and the officers of their respective staffs had now reached a crisis. The army was destitute, and was melting away by desertion. The loss of the capital, the news of its altered political attitude, not to speak of sheer weariness, affected the judgment of the senior officers. They were stripped of illusions, sated with achievements, and unprepared to face civil strife. They marched into Napoleon’s room and represented the situation. A letter from Beumonville was read out. “Very good, gentlemen,” replied the Emperor with unexpected compliance, “since it must be so, I abdicate”; and then, as all present accepted his proposals for a regency in the name of the King of Rome, he drew up the Act of Abdication and appointed commissioners to treat for a suspension of arms. Suddenly, swept away by a revulsion of feeling, he threw himself on a sofa, struck his thigh, and cried, “Nonsense, gentlemen; let us leave that and march tomorroW! We shall beat them.” An impassioned argument followed; but the Marshals were in earnest and bore him down. He wrote and signed with his own hand an abdication in favour of his son. Caulaincourt, Ney, and Macdonald were sent to lay the document before Alexander. On their way through Essonnes they induced Marmont to go with them.

The Tsar had formally proclaimed his intention of never treating with Napoleon or any other member of his family; he had thus already decided against the proposal of a regency. But what if a regency were the only- plan which the army would accept, the only plan which would avert further bloodshed ? The members of the Provisional Government waited anxiously in Alexander’s salon while the envoys expounded their cause in an inner chamber. Then, dismissing the envoys, Alexander called in the Government, and explained with animation the advantages which would accrue from the acceptance of Napoleon’s proposition—a Govern­ment served by able and experienced men, enjoying the sympathy and support of Austria, respecting the habits and the new in    of France, and finally commanding, as no other Government could, the entire allegiance of the army. Talleyrand, Dalberg, and Dessoles replied that, if a regency were established, Napoleon would be back again at the end of a year; that many members of his family were too ambitious to be content with a subordinate station; and that the claims of the Bourbons had now been so far revived that it was impossible to discard them without injustice and injury. The Tsar listened attentively, and admitted the envoys to a second audience. Again the envoys were dismissed, the members of the Government admitted, and the arguments of the army warmly pressed and energetically combated. It w-as 2 a.m. before this singular and crucial debate came to a close.

Count Pozzo di Borgo got up on April 5 to look at the sunrise. As he was standing at the window a hand was laid upon his shoulder; and the Tsar apprised him of the joyful tidings that Marmont’s corps had arrived at Versailles. “ You see,” he said, “it is Providence who wills it; she manifests and declares herself. No more doubt, no more hesitation.” General Souham had in fact taken the decisive step without waiting for Marmont’s orders, having learnt that Napoleon was about to be informed of the intended desertion of the corps. Alexander’s way was now cleared. The army was divided against itself. The envoys were instructed that the abdication must include the whole family of Napoleon.

On the morning of April 13, after many painful hesitations, Napoleon ratified the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which banished him to the island of Elba and settled the rank, title, and revenue to be enjoyed by himself and the various members of his family. The terms of the treaty were on the whole liberal—an annual revenue of two million francs for himself, with reversion of one million to the Empress; a revenue of two millions and a half to be distributed among the members of his family; a capital sum of two millions to be expended in gratifications to his followers; the full sovereignty over the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla for the Empress, with succession to her son and descendants ; and lastly the island of Elba for himself in full sovereignty. The place of exile was chosen by himself, as preferable to either Corsica or Corfu— alternatives which had been offered by the Tsar. Yet at times the transaction appeared intolerably humiliating to his proud and sensitive nature. “Why should they make a treaty with a vanquished man?” he asked; and over and over again, catching at straws of hope, he demanded the return of the Act of Abdication. On the 12th he refused ratification and talked coldly with Maret of suicide. In the night he took a poison or an opiate which he had carried on his person all through the Russian campaign; but his recovery seemed to him to indicate that he was still destined for high things, and on the 13th he signed the Act. A week later he took leave of his Old Guard, embraced the eagle, and left Fontainebleau.

Thus was the way prepared for the Bourbons. It was, as Guizot truly says, a trait of Napoleon’s genius that he never forgot them and knew them to be his only rivals for the throne of France. They were not exactly restored by the foreign armies; they were not restored by the voice of France; they owed nothing to their own merits or exertions. They came back because France was tired and dumb, disinclined to found a republic, or to embark upon a sea of experiment. To the Napoleonic men, such as Talleyrand, who interpreted France to the foreign conqueror, a constitutional monarchy was the only solution. It would enlist a long array of glorious memories; it would preserve the heritage of the Revolution; it would make the least possible disturbance in the administration. The white and the red spectre would alike be exorcised by a monarchy restored on constitutional conditions.

But there was a fundamental difficulty in the scheme. It was of the essence of the old monarchy that it was absolute and unconditional, and that its title was based not upon the will of the people but upon hereditary right. If, then, the Bourbons were restored, and if their restoration were not only made to depend explicitly upon the grant of the French people, but were also accompanied by conditions settled before­hand by the popular voice, what became of the principle of legitimacy or the old monarchical tradition? The head of the Bourbon House had always claimed that he had never ceased to be King of France. How could he then loyally accept terms which implied that this claim was futile? And yet, if no terms were settled, if it were not made clear that the basis of the monarchy had been changed, all the conquests of the Revolution might be lost, all the evils of the ancien régime might be restored. The Constitutional Charter—the phrase came from Talleyrand—which was adopted by the Senate on April 6, frankly departed from the old principles. It summoned “freely to the throne Louis-Stanilas-Xavier of France, brother to the late King,” scrupulously eschewing any mention of an official title. It provided that the Charter should be submitted to a plebiscite, and that Louis-Stanilas-Xavier could only be proclaimed King of France after he had signed and sworn to adhere to the constitutional and practical provisions contained in the document. These were such as met the general needs of the situation—the King, master of the executive power; the legislative power divided between King, Senate, and Elective Chamber; responsibility of ministers; taxation by consent; the jury system; the irrevocability of the sale of Church lands; the continuance of military pensions and ranks; the recognition of the new as well as of the old nobility. The influence of Montesquiou obtained the unreserved attribution of the executive power to the King, the royal right of nomination to the Senate, and the admissibility of ministers to the two Chambers. But the greed of the senators threw a dark shade of discredit upon the Act. A provision was inserted to the effect that all the existing members of the Senate were to form part of the new Second Chamber, and that the senatorial endowments were to be equally divided among them. The leaders of liberal opinion argued that this transparent exhibition of cupidity had been permitted by Talleyrand in order to favour the establishment of autocracy; and so brisk was the shower of opprobrious pamphlets that the Provisional Government recurred to the censorship of the press. It was a grave misfortune for France that so solemn a transaction as the establishment of a limited monarchy should have been discredited from the first by the selfishness of some of its principal promoters.

Louis was in England, prostrate with gout; but Monsieur (the Comte d’Artois) was at Nancy ; and Vitrolles persuaded Talleyrand that it would be well to receive him in the capital as his brother’s lieutenant. There was brilliant sunshine on April 12, the day of the solemn entry. As the Prince, attired in the uniform of the National Guard, rode down the Boulevards, the enthusiasm was indescribable. His few utterances were felicitous; and one, which was invented for him after­wards by Count Beugnot—“Nothing is changed save that there is one Frenchman the more”—went round France like wildfire. Tears were in every eye as the “Domine, salvum fac re gem'' was chanted by ten thousand voices. At the end of the ceremony, the old servants of the Prince, who had wept his absence for five-and-twenty years, embraced his knees; and he raised them with a touching grace. When he reached the Tuileries, he dismounted from his horse, addressed the National Guard in some appropriate words, and, shaking hands with several officers and soldiers, bade them remember the day, protesting that he would never forget it. “How can I be fatigued?” he said in the evening to Beugnot, “it is the only day of happiness which I have tasted for thirty years.” “Do you understand such enthusiasm, such exultation?” said Ney, turning to Vitrolles during the service at Notre Dame. “Who could have believed it?” Cowardice and loyalty, sentimentality and reason, repentance and hope, were all combined in the intoxication of that day.

As yet nothing had been done to settle the title and constitutional position of the Prince, who was somewhat loosely described by Talleyrand as the “Chief of the Government.” His royalist advisers wished him to assume the title of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, arguing that his brother was already sovereign of France and competent to delegate his authority. Such a claim was however in clear contradiction to the spirit and the terms of the Charter. The Senate declined to acknowledge powers delegated by a sovereign whose title it had not admitted, and was unwilling itself to confer them without limiting conditions. As the contest threatened to become acute, Alexander intervened; and a prudent compromise was arrived at. On the one hand, the Senate conferred the provisional government of France upon the Comte d’Artois with the title of Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom; while, on the other hand, Monsieur replied that he was acquainted with the constitutional act which recalled his brother to the throne, and that, while he had no authority to accept the Constitution, yet, knowing his brother’s senti­ments and principles, he could assure them in the King’s name that he would admit the fundamental conditions, which he then proceeded to state. The Senate and the Legislature were delighted with the adroitness of an address which seemed to promise so fairly for constitutional rule. But to his principal confidant. Vitrolles, the Prince spoke words of evil omen, “Yes, the engagement is taken. We must keep to it frankly; and, if after some years it appears that things cannot go on, we shall have to try something else.” The experiment was made in 1830.

Fat and gouty, indolent and clever, with a caustic turn of phrase and the nonchalant and playful temper of the dilettante student, Louis XVIII was watching the course of events from his exile at Hartwell. Sixty years of life had ripened his wit and enlarged his knowledge of the Latin classics without bringing him ideas or passions, or schooling him to the management of affairs. His unwieldy bulk, completely prohibitive of horse exercise, disqualified him from playing the role of popular hero, despite the countervailing advantages of a finely cut countenance, a sonorous and agreeable voice, and flashing eyes. He had been so long absent from France that he was ignorant of her new men and her new ways; and, coming at an advanced age out of the shadow of a studious retirement, he was unfitted for strenuous action in glare and heat. Yet, despite all this, he had some qualifications for the part which he was now suddenly called upon to play. His bearing was dignified and gracious, his language felicitous; and in all the smaller concerns of life he possessed an exquisite tact. A kind of fatalism, half religious, half epicurean, if it conduced to the neglect of business, supplied him with a stock of passive courage, which was occasionally impressive. His natural moderation and sweetness of disposition, his absence of religious animosity, his wise abstention from the intrigues and exaggerations of the Émigrés, his power of alert and sensible criticism, were all clear advantages. “He is,” said the Duke of Wellington, “the most cautious man I ever saw, and the best sovereign for this country.” Nor was his past record unpromising. In the Assembly of Notables he had supported liberal measures, and during the early months of the Revolution he was generally understood to be in favour of a limited monarchy. It is true that he subsequently proclaimed his complete attachment to the system of the ancien régime, describing it as the “Ark of the Covenant”; but in later years he had publicly receded from so desperate a position. In a declaration published at Mittau on December 4, 1804, he had promised to forget the past, to recognise liberty and equality, and to secure existing interests if he were recalled to the throne. He was prepared, in fact, to accept the position of a constitutional king—a situation, as his friend the Prince Regent may have taught him, by no means incompatible with the pursuit of pleasure.

An acceptance of the senatorial Constitution was accordingly penned, when advices from Paris supervened and prompted a higher flight. Learning that his brother had been received without promise or oath, that the Senate was decried and its Charter without authority, Louis determined to assume the royal title, and to ignore the pretension of a discredited body to confer a crown or to impose conditions on its wearer. At St Ouen, before the gates of Paris, he issued a declaration which promised constitutional ride, while it safeguarded the legitimist principle. The document declared that the plan of the Senate, though good in its essential particulars, was hastily composed and would require modifica­tion. Accordingly Senate and Legislature were summoned for June 10, with a pledge that the terms of a liberal Constitution would be submitted to them. With this profession, as distasteful to the extreme royalists as it was disgusting to the liberals, Louis XVIII entered Paris.

His entry took place on May 3, under a stainless sky; but “it was not,” says Beugnot, “like the entry of Monsieur. The heart did not speak so loud.” Sullen silence was mingled with vociferous enthusiasm, cries for the King with acclamations of the Imperial Guard, which contributed two companies to the escort. Yet, even if Chateaubriand, the greatest living master of French sentiment, had not proclaimed them, the calamities of the House, long fallen and now restored, would have struck the common heart. In the evening a vast crowd filled the Carrousel and the gardens of the Tuileries, calling again and again for the King and his niece the Duchesse d’Angoulême. A pamphlet from the pen of Lally-Tollendal ran through the town, celebrating the virtues and the sorrows of that simple, narrow, and austere lady. But, with her morose features, masculine fibre, and stem royalist creed, she was not destined to capture the heart of France. Her life had been fatally blighted in the Temple prison. In the male members of her House there was little of romance, of tragedy, or of heroism.

The two first tasks of the new Government were to draw up a Con­stitution and to sign a peace. A select number of senators and deputies was appointed to confer with three royal commissioners under the presidency of Dambray, the new Chancellor, and to prepare a Charter for the acceptance of the Chambers. The institution of a House of hereditary Peers, named by the King, unlimited in number, deliberating in secret, and invested with the power to try cases of high treason, was passed with the understanding that the senators should preserve their endow­ments. A Chamber of Deputies, to be composed for the present of the existing legislators, but in the future to be elected on a higher franchise, was to initiate all money-bills. It was in accordance with French tradition that the head of the Government should have power to make rules and ordinances “necessary for the execution of laws and the security of the State”; and no danger was anticipated from this branch of the prerogative. The right of initiative and legislation was accorded to the Crown; but the Chambers were given the power to suggest the principles and even the details of bills. The expedient of a Civil List voted for life was one for which the French mind was long prepared. The system of the rota, by which the Chamber of Deputies was to be renewed by a fifth every year, had been tried under the Directory; and, though perhaps unfavourable to the establishment of strong party government, it seemed likely to diminish the intensity of electoral crises. Freedom of worship was readily accorded to all the creeds; and only four voices were raised against declaring the Catholic faith to be the state religion. After a heated discussion, the maintenance of the revolutionary land­ settlement was unconditionally guarantee; and wise provisions were added to secure the abolition of confiscation, the retention of the jury, and the independence of the judicial bench. But, while the liberty of the press was formally permitted, it was distinctly stated that laws would be passed to chastise its abuse. Such were the main outlines of the Charter. Extreme royalists resented its concessions; and Bonapartists were outraged by the closing words “ Given at Paris in the year of grace 1814 and in the nineteenth year of our reign.” The word “Charter” itself, and the ancient prelude, “Nous accordons, nous faisons concession et octroi? showed clearly enough that the contractual theory of sovereignty had been cast to the winds. Still the bulk of the nation was satisfied. The Charter embodied the highest political wisdom which had been extracted from twenty-five years of democracy and despotism.

Even more important than the Charter was the Treaty of Peace between France and Europe, signed on April 30, and published on June 4. The situation was such that, while peace was a most imperious necessity for France, no glorious or honourable peace could be concluded. It was necessary to withdraw the French garrisons beyond the Rhine in order to purchase the removal of the foreign armies from the soil of France; it was necessary to accept the proposal of Metternich that all specifically French concerns should be there and then settled in Paris, while questions affecting the balance of power in Europe should be reserved for a congress in Vienna. It would have been too dangerous to defer the conclusion of the peace, in the hope of extracting advantages for France from the dissensions which were sure to arise in Vienna. Indeed, the Allies were masters of the situation, and could dictate their terms. They were fully alive to the necessity of treating France with generosity, and of connecting the advent of the new dvnasty with a popular peace. When France declined to pay a war-indemnity to Prussia, Russia, England, and Austria acquiesced in her refusal; and the demand was withdrawn. The art-galleries of Paris were permitted to retain the spoils with which Napoleon had enriched them. The provisions with reference to the ships in Dutch waters were liberal. But it was a settled principle that neither in Europe nor in the colonies must France ever again be permitted to exert a dangerous preponderance. Belgium, the Left Bank of the Rhine, the conquered lands in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy were to be ceded by France. The frontier of the fallen monarchy (1792) was to be the frontier of the monarchy restored, with an addition of territory comprising Montbeliard and Avignon, Chambery and Annecy. The Ile de France, Tobago, and Santa Lucia were retained by England, which had acquired them during the war. The country, which had nourished many illusions, and the Court, which had tried to obtain Luxemburg and a line of strong Belgian fortresses, were bitterly disappointed at so meagre a salvage ; and it was not the least of the undeserved misfortunes of the Bourbons that their restoration was associated with the national humiliation of a contracted frontier and abandoned colonies.

In spite of the temporary enthusiasm which the return of the Bourbons had evoked, the condition of public opinion in France was disquieting. The army was for the most part disaffected to the white cockade, and to such extent depleted by desertion that in April scarcely 90,000 men remained under arms. The three or four million possessors of national lands trembled for their property, which had become enormously depreciated by reason of the prevailing insecurity. The peasantry half expected the reimposition of tithes and feudal dues. In many places the villagers, indignant at the maintenance of the droits reunis, drove out the tax-collectors and burnt their registers. The Bretons and Vendeans went still further, and refused even to pay direct taxes. “We have fought for the King,” they said; “we ought not to pay any taxes at all.” In some places the old quarrel between those who had accepted and those who had resisted the Concordat broke out anew; and the members of the Petite Église, returning from a twelve years’ exile, loudly claimed to exercise their old functions, and openly agitated for the restitution of Church property. “The country districts,” wrote Dupont, “and a large number of the towns are opposed to the friends of the King.” This opposition was, however, scattered and disorganised; and a large part of it might reasonably be expected to melt away under a strong administration, all the more so since the world of politics and finance, literature and law was, with few exceptions, on the side of the monarchy. The vast body of the middle class, the manufacturers, the merchants, the indifferents, were heartily glad of peace and willing to support the new regime. The general staff of the army had put on the white cockade; and Ney, Augereau, Macdonald, and ten other generals drawn from different branches of the service, joined the King’s Council of War. Men of such diverse antecedents as Carnot and Fontanes, Fouche and Rouget de L’lsle, accepted the situation. There was likely to be plenty of quiet support if the monarchy managed well, and plenty of criticism however well it managed.

The ministry of Louis XVIII contained many able and well-meaning men, but it was neither strong, discreet, nor properly organised. The three most prominent members, Talleyrand, Montesquiou, and de Blacas, were none of them well-suited to deal with a situation of exceptional difficulty. Talleyrand had no taste for regular work, no parliamentary gifts, and little interest in the problems of domestic administration; consequently, when he went to Vienna to represent the interests of France at the Congress, he left no gap behind him. Montesquiou, Minister of the Interior, was honourable and disinterested, and a fluent and clever speaker in the Chambers; but his temperament was light and inconsequent; and, being a strict royalist by conviction, he had accepted the Constitution with little faith in its virtues and much suspicion of its vices. De Blacas remained at the Tuileries what he had been at Hartwell, a favourite and an émigré, devoted and laborious, a counsellor of modera­tion, out of fear that his master might be compromised by excess, but a stranger to France, and absolutely devoid of the knowledge of a statesman. Of the other ministers, Ferrand, Director-General of the Posts, the Chancellor Dambray, and Dupont, Minister of War, were unfortunate selections. The dark shadow of the Capitulation of Baylen still clung to the name of Dupont, and made him unpopular with the army; while the other two belonged to the familiar type which had for a quarter of a century learnt nothing. There was no Prime Minister, no collective responsibility; and the business of the Cabinet was transacted in a series of secret conferences held between the King, de Blacas, and the Ministers in turn. If the King had been a strenuous man with a coherent policy, this “ government by departments ” might not have been detrimental; but Louis detested work, was slow in signing his name, and liked his mind to be made up by others. “What is the good of making reports to him?” said Baron Louis to Beugnot. “You might as well make them to a saint in a niche. I just simply give him ordinances to sign, and he signs.”

The wits aptly described the system of government as “ paternal anarchy ”; and Wellington said truly that there was no Ministry, only Ministers. Every view, from the strict constitutionalism of Baron Louis to the reactionary royalism of Dambray and Ferrand, was represented among the Ministers. Side by side with them sat the Princes—Monsieur, the chieftain of the intractable royalists, who kept his own court, his own cabinet, his own police, and made no secret of his loathing for the Charter; Angouleme, narrow, ignorant, silent, and awkward, but with some grains of good sense; and lastly Berry, passionate, spontaneous, and injudicious, a good fellow with a bad temper, who loved women and horses, and would interrupt serious counsels with the language of the barrack or the stable.

Seldom has any Government been confronted with a less enviable situation. There was a financial deficit of from five to six hundred millions of francs; there was an immense diminution in the taxable area, owing to the loss of the Napoleonic conquests; and there was a sensible though temporary impoverishment of France herself. It was certain therefore that large reductions would have to be made in the naval and military establishments; and it was equally certain that such reductions could not be effected without occasioning widespread dissatisfaction and distress. Nor was it possible, with due regard to the economic situation of the country, to make any material remission of taxation, in spite of the general expectation that with peace the most obnoxious imposts would instantaneously disappear. Under such conditions, a Government of angels and sages could not have failed to make enemies and to disappoint hopes. Yet the measure of unpopularity would depend upon the wisdom with which affairs were administered, and the loyalty with which the Charter was observed. In both respects the Government fell short of the standard which the country had a right to expect.

There was something vigorous and heroic about the finance of Baron Louis. He made provision for the liquidation of a debt amounting to 759,000,000 francs, and successfully resisted a dishonourable proposal, emanating from the extreme royalists of the Chamber, that the State should repudiate one-fourth of the debt contracted under Napoleon. He maintained the unpopular taxes of 1813 and 1814, though Monsieur and Angouleme had been profuse in promises of remission. In one year he diminished the naval, military, and civil expenditure to a third of its former amount, reducing the army from a war footing of 600,000 to a peace footing of 201,140, and discharging ten or twelve thousand officers on half-pay, with the right, however, to succeed in order of seniority to two-thirds of the commissions as they became vacant. It was part of his design to make the Legislature an accomplice in his parsimony. By a revolution in French financial methods he proposed the budget of revenue at the same time as the budget of expenses, and promised that the taxes should be assigned to the purposes voted by the Chambers. The policy was perhaps over-strict, over-parsimonious. It might have been wiser to extend the process of reduction over a longer period of years and to raise more money upon loan ; for the goodwill of the army was worth the price. But no one will deny to Baron Louis the qualities of courage, skill, perseverance, and honesty; and the movement of the funds, which rose ten points upon the introduction, and three more upon the passing, of the budget, was an indication of his services towards the restoration of French credit.

The situation was, however, needlessly aggravated by several pieces of gratuitous folly. Before the arrival of the King, and despite the strong representations of Talleyrand, it had been decided to substitute the white cockade for the tricolour, and thus to discard the colours which in the mind of every French soldier were intimately associated with his own personal achievements and with all the military triumphs of the Empire. By the bad advice of the Princes, the Government consented to revive the old Household Corps, which had existed from the days of Louis XIV down to the eve of the French Revolution. The plan burdened the budget with the cost, exceeding 20,000,000 frs., of a small army of 6000 officers highly paid and expensively equipped; but expense was far from being the most objectionable feature in the new luxury. The establishment of the Household Corps was an intimation that the Imperial Guard could not be trusted to defend the throne. The starving half-pay officer—and the embarrassed Treasury could not always pay even the half-pay—contrasted his sorry lot with the affluent career thus opened to the young noble who had never smelt powder, and to the old emigre whose sword had rusted in its scabbard for twenty years. The whole army realised that some of the money lavished on the favoured corps might have kept deserving officers upon the active list, or repaired the battered uniforms of the men. It might have been expected that the Government would have disbanded the seven foreign regiments which had formed part of the Imperial army; on the contrary, an eighth was added to the number. It would have been easy to exclude from the army emigres who had fought against their country but they were readmitted in large numbers, and in many cases promoted; and, when we remember that for every émigré who was foisted on a regiment, one old officer was discharged on half-pay and another disappointed of promotion, we may imagine the jealousies aroused. Napoleon had advised the King to trust the Imperial Guard or to disband it. Louis did neither. It is true that the pay of the Guard was maintained, and that it was placed under the command of Ney and Oudinot; but the Royal Grenadiers of France, as they were now called, were removed from Paris and supplanted by the new Household troops. “You are about,” said Pasquier to Dupont, “to place at the head of the army a most formidable centre of discontent.”

The sacred ark of the Napoleonic army was the Legion of Honour; and the Government had the good sense to preserve it. But the prodigality with which the decoration was distributed to civilians seemed to indicate a desire to depreciate its value; and an insertion in the ministerial papers that the Order of St Louis would henceforth be the sole military Order caused deep resentment. To calm these suspicions, the King issued an ordinance on July 19, approving and confirming the Order. But the salaries were reduced and the decorations changed. The face of Henry IV was substituted for that of Napoleon, the three lilies for the eagle; and an archbishop—the Abbe de Pradt—was named Chancellor of the Order The intended suppression of certain schools for the daughters of legionaries with a view to effect an economy of 40,000 francs, the dismissal of 2500 veterans from the public institutions which had been burdened with their support, the suppression of the military schools of St Cyr and St Germain, the intended establishment of a royal military school “in order that the nobility of the kingdom may enjoy the advantages accorded by the edict of 1751,” and the changing of the numbers of almost all the regiments—all this added to the indignation of the soldiers. Stories too were circulated, telling how the Due de Berry had struck a soldier on parade, tom off his epaulettes, and spoken of the wars of the Empire as “ Five-and-twenty years of brigandage”; how the Due d’Angoulême had entered Paris in an English uniform; how Monsieur had replied to General Letort of the dragoons of the Guard, who had offered the services of his brave men, “Peace is made; we have no need of brave men.” The Marshals had received high commands and good pensions from the monarchy; but they, and still more keenly their wives, were made to feel the difference which divided the parvenu from the noble. “Je ne connate pas cette femme-là", said a great lady of the old regime; “c’est une maréchale".

For the army, then, the new dynasty was associated with a humili­ating peace, a miserly economy, and diminished opportunities of promotion. Ragged, barefooted, without regular pay, the veterans of Napoleon watched with anger the distribution of the Legion of Honour to obscure civilians, the formation of the Household Brigade from foreigners, Chouans, and emigres, and the ordinance of May 12 which reserved two-thirds of the vacant promotions to the officers on half-pay and the remaining one-third to the King’s nominees. The army had ceased to be a democratic profession, for no non-commissioned officer could ever now expect to be a sub-lieutenant. It is no wonder that the troops, especially the returned prisoners, cherished the memory of the great exile who had made them, as Pozzo said, “a nation apart,” that they kept the tricolour as a sacred relic, mixed the ashes of their burnt eagles in wine and drank them down to save them from dishonour, disturbed many a review by their seditious cries, and diffused the spirit of discontent through the villages of France.

It might have been expected that the Church, which had been so submissive to Napoleon, would not have received special favours from the new monarch. But the Comte d'Artois and the King, habituated to the English Sunday, put pressure upon the director of police to remedy the lax notions which prevailed in France. Without consulting the Council or any of the ministers save Dambray, Beugnot signed an ordinance (June 7) prohibiting under severe penalties all work and trade on Sundays and festivals, and two days afterwards issued a decree enforcing respect to the processions of the Fête-Dieu. The first ordinance was universally blamed, “because it was too severe, because it deranged the habits of an infinite number of people, and because it menaced those who broke it with a heavy money fine, and was in fact a penal law which the King had no right to promulgate without the consent of the Chambers.” The second was regarded as an infringement of the religious toleration granted by the Charter, as well as a violation of an as yet unrepealed law prohibiting out-of-door religious processions. Both together were taken as an indication that the Court was willing to violate the Charter in order to promote the predominance of the Roman Catholic Church. So general was the indignation that the Government was compelled to withdraw the two measures.

In the course of the summer, party feeling defined itself more clearly in Paris. A monarchy which accepted a bicameral Constitution, allowed Bonapartists and Jacobins to sit in the Legislature and even in the Ministry, retained the prefects and judges of the Empire, paid life­pensions to the senators, received the Marshals’ wives at Court, and declined to restore the loyalists to their old homes, was not the kind of monarchy of which the exiles had dreamed. Men who had suffered years of banishment in the cause of the old France wished to see the old France once more—provinces instead of departments, parlements instead of law-courts, autocracy in place of constitutionalism, the old Orders instead of the Legion of Honour. The more extreme cried for the deportation of the regicides and the repudiation of the Napoleonic debt; and their organ, La Quotidienne, raved against a monarch who did everything for his enemies and nothing for his friends.

While this knot of men, “more royalist than the King,” were assailing the Government under the leadership of Monsieur, there was growing up on the other hand a constitutional party of opposition, formed of the most intelligent politicians in Paris. The Egeria of the movement was Madame de Stael; its literary organ was Le Censeur, a grave and moderate journal edited by two young lawyers, Comte and Dunoyer; its greatest reputation was La Fayette; its principal pamphleteer was Benjamin Constant, no longer the Tribune of the Consulate, still less the Jacobin of the Directory, but a mystic in religion and a constitutional legitimist in politics. Constant still gambled at night, and was the slave of women ; but his excitable and vain temperament was compatible with considerable intellectual nobility and a real grip of constitutional prin­ciples. In no small measure France owes her first lessons in the principles and practice of a constitutional monarchy to his mercurial pen.

The great topic of debate and source of ferment was the loyalty of the Government to the Charter. It arose in connexion with the press, in connexion with the land, in connexion with the Church, one might almost say in connexion with every branch of public policy. When the Government brought in a scheme for the censorship of the press, it was bitterly attacked as a distinct violation of the Charter. Talleyrand criticised the measure in the salons; Comte thundered in the Censeur; a prominent Bourbon organ, the Journal des Débats, went into opposition ; and, though the Government accepted important amendments, the licensing commission only passed the Peers by one vote. The effect of the agitation on the Press Law—and it must be remembered that the question was before the Chambers for a period of three months—was profound and critical. “France,” says Pasquier, “was inundated with satirical pamphlets, which represented the men in power as bent upon recalling the days of ignorance and darkness. The success of these writings was great; and public opinion henceforth shared their fears and their angers.”

Another heated discussion arose over a Bill to restore to the emigres such of their lands as had not yet been sold by the State. The measure was just, and might have passed without friction but for the injudicious speech of Ferrand, the Minister who introduced it to the Chambers. “The émigrés have followed the right line   the King regrets that he cannot give to this measure all the latitude which in his heart of hearts he desires”—phrases such as these seemed to indicate that mere was to be done for the émigrés hereafter, and that the clause in the Charter which decreed the inviolability of all property was not safe from attack. The expose des motifs was unanimously condemned; and a refutation was prepared, filling four columns of the Moniteur. But, though the debate raged angrily for eight sittings, the law, with some amendments, was passed by a large majority. The liberal opposition in the Chambers kept within the bounds of moderation; but, in the country at large, Ferrand’s indiscretion was read in the light of the publications of two lawyers, Dard and Falconnet, contending that sales of national property were legally invalid; and the inference was generally drawn that the Bourbons were about to embark upon a colossal scheme of eviction with a view to restoring the land to its former owners. The promotion of Ferrand to the dignity of Count, a few days after his speech, confirmed the worst suspicions; and, when the Parliamentary session closed on December 30, 1814, the Government, despite many concessions and explanations, had fallen greatly in public esteem.

In order to bring strength to the Ministry, Louis, at the end of November, transferred the portfolio of war from Dupont to Soult. The new Minister was one of the most illustrious of the Marshals, a skilful general and a resolute administrator; and his appointment was at first received with satisfaction. But he had risen to favour with the Court by opening a subscription for the men who had fallen at Quiberon ; and it was soon discovered that, in his desire to please his new master, he was insensible to considerations of delicacy and tact. He began bv ordering all half-pay officers out of Paris to their birthplaces, and adopted, if he did not suggest, the idea of giving pensions to the officers and soldiers of the royalist army of the west who had been wounded in defence of the throne. He sent a commission into Normandv and Britanny, one of whose members, a noted Chouan, was said to have committed the foulest crimes in the civil war. He recommended the Comte de Bruges, a royalist nobody, to be Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour. But perhaps no circumstance contributed to cast so much odium upon his administration and upon the Government as the affair of General Excelmans.

During the last week of November, a certain Andral, physician to the Court of Naples, was arrested at Nemours by order of the prefect of police. Among his papers was found a letter from General Excelmans addressed to the King of Naples, and containing an assurance that, if things had not taken a favourable turn at Vienna, “a thousand brave officers instructed in the school and under the eyes of your Majesty” would have rushed to assist the Neapolitan throne. The letter did not pass the bounds of indiscretion; and Dupont contented himself with a mild reproof. Soult, however, determined to treat the matter seriously, put Excelmans on half-pay, and ordered him at once to leave Paris for his birthplace. The general first pleaded delay, and then determined to resist. Upon the question of legal right Excelmans was clearly in error; for, though on half-pay, he was still in the service of the Crown and amenable to military discipline. But Soult and his agents contrived by their violence to make a hero out of a melodramatic and insolent soldier. All France learnt how the house of Excelmans had been broken into by night; how the general had bared his breast and cried, “ I know that you have come to assassinate me. Make an end of it! I am ready”; how he had tried to blow out his brains; how he had escaped by the garden; how his wife had fainted five times; how the cordon would not permit her doctor to enter. In a moment Excelmans became the hero of the army, of the liberals, of all France. Madame de Stael wrote to him; Lanjuinais called twice a day; La Fayette offered him the asylum of his country residence. When, on January 25, 1815, he was acquitted at Lille, enthusiasm knew no bounds.

The state of tension in Paris and outside steadily increased during the months of January and February, 1815. The King had decided that on January 21 the ashes of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and Madame Elizabeth should be borne to St Denis, and that on the same day the first stone should be laid of two monuments to commemorate the royal martyrs. Funeral services were to be celebrated in all the cathedrals and churches of the kingdom ; and the day was to be further solemnised by the closing of the law-courts and the theatres. The desire was natural and pious; and no exception could reasonably be taken to the ceremonial devised for the occasion. But, when the nerves of a highly-strung people are strained, the least event may give rise to suspicion or panic. A dark rumour spread through the capital that the celebration of January 21 was to be marked by the massacre of all the Terrorists; that lists of proscription had been drawn up; that the Princes, and especially the Duchesse d’Angoulême, were backing the conspirators; that the King, who was opposed to it, had been induced to visit Trianon; and that it was to execute this nefarious project that all the chiefs of the Vendéans had collected in Paris. An incident connected with the burial of a famous actress, Mademoiselle Raucourt, whose corpse, as that of an excommunicate, was refused admission to the Church of St Roch, until the crowd, with shouts of “les prêtres à la lanterns” broke open the door, still further exasperated the public mind. Nor was this nervousness entirely without foundation. There were undoubtedly desperate men and plotters among the royalists, whose press, in denying that an amnesty had ever been promised to crimes, pointedly encouraged a campaign of vengeance. The extent of the alarm may be gauged by the fact that Carnot sat up during the night of January 21 with his weapons handy.

Plots were met by counter-plots. At the end of October, 1814, about thirty half-pay officers had been arrested on suspicion of plotting the assassination of the King and the Princes. The excitement over the Excelmans case, the affair of St Roch, and the celebration of January 21, seemed to show that Paris would rise if it could find anyone to give the lead. The brothers Lallemand, commanding respectively the department of the Aisne and the artillery of La Fere, and Drouet, the head of the 16th military division at Lille, were confident that they could march upon Paris, raise the faubourgs, and overthrow the monarchy. They sounded Davout, who had been proscribed by the Bourbons, and entered into communications with Lavalette, Bassano, and Fouche. The soul of the conspiracy was Fouche, whose hopes of advancement under the monarchy had been dashed to the ground by the recent ministerial appointments, and who was clever enough to see that the fabric was unstable. But the conspirators, though agreed upon the necessity of overthrowing the Bourbons by an assault on the Tuileries, were divided as to their future course. The vehement Bonapartists wished simply to proclaim the exiled Emperor; but this course was repugnant to the regicides and to those whom Bonaparte had alienated at the close of his career. The Duke of Orleans, the son of a regicide and himself once a soldier in the armies of the Revolution, “the only Bourbon who understood France,” as both Alexander and La Fayette thought, seemed to offer better guarantees. He would unite the revolutionists and the moderate liberals, and realise the hopes of the men who wished for a constitutional monarchy. The Duke was discreetly approached by Talleyrand, but would have nothing to say to him.

Fouche, however, determined to proceed with the conspiracy. But La Fayette and the editors of the Censeur preferred to trust to the con­stitutional action of the new Chamber of Deputies, which was to meet in May; and in the middle of February, when all was ready, Davout, the military chieftain of the intended insurrection, declared that he would have none of it, alleging ignorance of Napoleon’s wishes, in reality moved by distrust of Fouché. Meanwhile Fouché had entered into correspondence with Metternich, who was glad to communicate with so sensitive a barometer of the political weather. Since the regency of Marie-Louise was a possible outcome of the plot, it was necessary to secure the consent of the Powers whose representatives were then assembled at Vienna. But how could the Powers tolerate a regency for Marie-Louise, if her terrible husband were to remain within two days’ sail of the French coast? If Napoleon could be put to death or banished to a distant isle in the Atlantic, then indeed the idea might become a practical policy. Fouche wished it to be practical. One of his men suggested assassination to Louis XVIII, but the King rejected the proposal. It was necessary therefore to work for the deportation of Napoleon—a safe task, since the scheme was as agreeable to the Bourbons as to their secret foes. Herein Fouché agreed with Talleyrand.

But the signal for revolt did not come from Vienna. On Sunday, March 5, at 1 p.m., it was announced to Louis that Bonaparte had landed on the coast of France. Some hours afterwards Fouché learnt the news, and determined to precipitate the revolt. If his men marched on Paris they could overturn Louis, establish a Provisional Government, and resist or side with Napoleon according as the opinion of the country declared itself. But all miscarried. A handful under Lefebvre Desnouettes marched as far as Compiègne, and then, finding the outlook cold and cheerless, returned to their duty. Such was the sole outcome of all the plotting under the First Restoration.

Napoleon was not brought over from Elba by plot or conspiracy. He came because he had correctly divined the situation in France. His march to the capital is one of the miracles of history. He fought no battle; he shed no blood; he was greeted by the peasantry all along the route as a saviour and a friend; not a soldier would fire on him; his name was a talisman which drew all the valour of the kingdom to itself. He often rode before his troops unattended; yet no one offered him violence. He promised liberal reforms—not that liberal reforms mattered to peasant or soldier, but to make his return sound pleasantly in the ears of the lawyers and politicians of Paris. Never had. his instinct for action been more faultless, his demeanour more enchanting in its direct and spontaneous ease. “Route ta boule, roi cotillon, Rends ta couronne a Napoleon," blithely sang men, women, and children along his triumphal way. “Le pêre Violette” had come to teach the cure and the emigre a lesson, and to make secure every peasant-holding in France. On March 10 he was at Lyons, on the 17th at Auxerre, on the morning of the 20th at Fontainebleau. On the 14th he was joined by Ney, who had boasted that he would bring him back to Paris in an iron cage.

Louis had always said, in his easy way, that the clouds would pass over and all would soon be well. He knew that he had given France peace and liberty, that he had no intention of violating the Charter, that he had not been stiff with the Chambers, that his Government had respected the material interests of the nation. Given time, the good sense of the nation would rally round him; fears would be quieted, suspicions allayed. The country might grumble, mock, criticise, but it could never be so mad as to upset his throne. But he had not calculated on Bonaparte. Though he had been warned in November that there was something stirring in Elba, he took no heed; and, even after the news of the landing, he was full of confidence that the Princes would be able to stop “ the escapade.” But on the night of March 9-10 news came that Lyons was untenable; and the assurance of the Court oozed away. The wildest courses were suggested. De Blacas thought that the King should go in an open carriage, accompanied by the Chambers, to meet Napoleon; Monsieur, that he should summon Fouche to the Council; Marmont, that he should fortify the Tuileries and the Louvre, and prepare to stand a siege of two months, while Monsieur and his sons raised the provinces. Bourrienne advised a retirement to Lille; and Vitrolles proposed that the Chambers should be summoned to Rochelle, and that the King should throw himself oil the loyalty of the Bretons. With true perspicacity, Montesquiou objected that the King of La Vendee would never be the King of France.

Soult was suspected of treason and dismissed; Bourrienne was made prefect of police. Montesquiou advised large concessions to liberal opinion, and carried the King with him. From the 9th to the 16th of March a series of announcements appeared in the Moniteur, destined to satisfy the constitutionalists and to appease the resentments of the people. Half-pay officers were to be recalled to service and full pay. Arrears due to the Legion of Honour were to be paid; privileged corps were to be formed of the old Imperial Guard; the utmost loyalty to the Charter was protested. On March 16 the King drove to the Palais Bourbon, wearing for the first time the rosette of the Legion of Honour. “How,” he said to the assembled deputies and peers, “can I at sixty years better terminate my career than by dying in defence of my country?” A crowd of deputies rose at his words, and stretching forth their arms swore to die for the King and the Charter. Even Monsieur protested on oath his fidelity to constitutional principles.

But on March 17 it was known that Marshal Ney had deserted to the enemy; and the Court made up its mind to flee. Very secretly, on the evening of Sunday, March 19, the King drove out of Paris; nor was it till the next morning that his ministers became aware of his flight. Then for the first time all was known—the desertion of Ney, the flight of the King, the arrival of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. Crowds collected in the squares and gardens awaiting the event; generals and officers drove out along the Essonnes road to proffer their services. At 2 p.m. the tricolour was hoisted on the Tuileries; but still he did not come. The night closed in; a fine rain began to fall, and the streets emptied. Then a carriage galloped into the town, with the torches of the Polish Lancers of the Guard on either side. It was Napoleon. Instantly a crowd surged round the Tuileries, and he was borne through the press, a light smile upon his lips, his face deadly pale, up the great staircase to the throne­room, where a hundred lustres shed their brilliance upon a gay crowd of men and women. But he was not deceived by the splendour of his reception. “Mon citer” he said to Mollien, “the time for compliments is passed; they have let me come, as they have let those people go.”

So fell a Government of which Madame de Stael could say that it was guilty of no single act of arbitrary authority; a Government which respected public and private liberty and secured possibilities of quiet and comfortable living to its subjects. According to its own lights, it honestly served the interests of France both at home and abroad. It was not disloyal to the Charter, though it had no faith in it; and, thanks to the courage and adroitness of Talleyrand, it regained for France a place in the counsels of Europe. Many as were its errors, it was nearly as good a Government as the circumstances permitted. But Paris, always re­morseless in its ridicule and captious in its criticism, could make no allowance for the pygmy who had been called upon to fill the giant’s throne. The grievances of the army were partly inevitable and partly trifling. The suspicions of the provinces were based, not upon injuries received, but upon fears entertained. A strong king, enthusiastic for the Constitution, might have allayed these tremors, kept the emigres in check, and soothed the susceptibilities of the army. But still he would not have been safe. To a race which had drunk so deeply of military and civil glory, his rule must have meant the beginning of the humdrum age.

 

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. I.