Chapter 3

The Emperor imparted this second interview to the Duke of Vicenza; and directed him, to send for M. de Montron, and M. Bresson, and endeavour to set them talking. The Duke de Vicenza having been able to get nothing out of them, the Emperor, as I have been informed, would see them himself; and, after having questioned and sounded them for four hours, he dismissed them both, without having heard any thing but accounts of the hostile dispositions of the allies, and the conversations they had had at Vienna with M. de Talleyrand and M. de Metternich, the substance of which was the same as that of my conferences with M. Werner.

As the Emperor had rejected my first suspicions with so much indifference, I was flattered to see him sharing my distrust: but this gratification of self-love gave way to the most painful reflexions.

I had conceived the highest opinion of the character and patriotism of the Duke of Otranto; I considered him as one of the first statesmen in France; and I bitterly regretted, that such qualities, and such talents, instead of being devoted to the good of his country, should be employed in favouring the designs of our enemies, and in coolly contriving with them the means of subjugating us.

These reflexions, which ought to have inspired me with horror for M. Fouché, had on me an opposite effect: I was staggered by the enormity of the crime I ascribed to him. No, said I to myself, M. Fouché cannot be guilty of such baseness: he has received too many benefits from the Emperor, to be capable of betraying him, and has given too many proofs of attachment and affection to his country, to conspire its dishonour and ruin. His propensity to intrigue may have led him astray; but his intrigues, if reprehensible, are at least not criminal.

Thus I repaired to the Duke of Otranto's in the persuasion, that I had judged him too severely. But his air of constraint, and his captious endeavours, to penetrate what M. Werner might have said to me, convinced me, that his conscience was not at ease; and I felt my just prejudices revived and increased[4]. The time I staid with him was spent in idle questions and dissertations on the probabilities of peace or war. It would be useless and tiresome, to recite them here.

[Footnote 4: When the Duke of Otranto became minister to the King, and was appointed to make out lists of proscription, I was desirous of knowing, what I had to expect from his resentment; and wrote to him, to sound his intentions. He sent for me, received me with much kindness, and assured me of his friendship and protection. "You did your duty," said he to me, "and I did mine. I foresaw, that Bonaparte could not maintain his situation. He was a great man, but had grown mad. It was my duty, to do what I did, and prefer the good of France to every other consideration."

The Duke of Otranto behaved with the same generosity towards most of the persons, of whom he had any reason to complain; and, if he found himself obliged, to include some of them in the number of the proscribed, he had at least the merit of facilitating their escape from death, or the imprisonment intended for them, by assisting them with his advice, with passports, and frequently with the loan of money.]

The rising of the King of Naples became afterwards the subject of our conversation. "Murat is a lost man," said M. Fouché to me: "he is not strong enough, to contend with Austria. I had advised him, and I have written again lately to the Queen, to keep himself quiet, and wait the course of events: they would not listen to me, and have done wrong: they might have had it in their power to treat; now they cannot; they will be sent about their business without pity, and without any conditions."

The Emperor, who had become uneasy, directed M. de Montron and M. Bresson to be watched. He was informed, that the latter had just been sent to England by order of the minister at war.

The Prince of Eckmuhl, being questioned, said, that an English dealer had forty thousand muskets to sell; and he had commissioned M. Bresson, to go and examine them, and treat for their purchase. This mission, which did not at first excite the Emperor's attention, afterwards recurred to his mind: he first thought it strange, and then suspicious. "If Davoust," said he, "had not had some motive for concealing this business from me, he would have mentioned it: it is not natural: he is acting in concert with Fouché."

This glimpse of light produced no effect. Napoleon contented himself with severely reprimanding the minister at war; and ordering him, never again to send any person whatever out of France, without his consent.

A new incident occurred, to strengthen the Emperor's apprehensions. He was informed by the prefect of police, that M. Bor..., formerly one of the principal agents of the police, and one of the habitual confidants of the minister, had set off for Switzerland with a passport from M. Fouché. An order for arresting M. Bor... was transmitted by telegraph to General Barbanegre, who commanded at Huninguen: but it arrived too late; M. Bor..., as quick as lightning, had already passed the frontier.

The Emperor no longer had any doubt of M. Fouché's treachery; but he was afraid the disclosure of it would occasion alarm and discouragement. In fact, people would not have failed to infer, that the imperial cause was lost; since this minister, whose perspicacity was well known, quitted it to join the Bourbons.

Napoleon foresaw too the approaching commencement of hostilities; and, convinced, that the fate of France would not be decided by the manoeuvres of the Duke of Otranto, he resolved, to wait for a more favourable opportunity of getting rid of him. If the victory of Fleurus had not been followed by the disasters of Waterloo, the first decree the Emperor would have signed, on his arrival at Brussels, would probably have been for displacing the Duke of Otranto.

The time of the rendezvous given me by M. Werner being come, I asked Napoleon for orders. "Fouché," said he to me, "will no doubt have warned Metternich; and it is probable, that his agent will return no more: it is even possible, that measures will be taken, to arrest you. I think, therefore, you may as well remain here."--"I do not think, sire, that M. de Metternich is capable of such an action. The patriotism and frankness, which I displayed in my conferences with M. Werner, appear to have pleased the prince; and M. Werner informed me, that he was particularly directed, to express to me the good opinion (permit me to repeat the terms) which he had conceived of my character and merit. Your Majesty would be wrong, I think, not to allow me to make this last attempt. As the point in question was not a conspiracy, but to set on foot a negotiation, it is possible, that M. Werner may return."--"You have my consent very willingly; but I am afraid, they will lay hold of you: be prudent."

I was afraid so too. I set off.

It happened as the Emperor foresaw. M. Werner appeared no more.

Thus ended this negotiation, which might perhaps have realized many hopes, had not M. Fouché occasioned its failure.

At the period when it took place, England, in its celebrated Memoir of the 25th of April, and Austria, in that it published the 9th of May following, had authentically declared, subsequently to my first interview at Bâle, that they had not engaged by the treaty of the 29th of March, to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne; and that their intentions in pursuing the war were not, to impose on France any particular government whatever.

These declarations gave great weight to the proposals of M. Werner. The Emperor thought them sincere; and in one of those moments of openness, which he was not always sufficiently master of himself to suppress, he said at his levee: "Well, gentlemen, they offer me the regency already: it depends only on myself, whether I shall accept it." These inconsiderate words made some impression; and they who remembered them have since asserted, that, if the Emperor had not been enamoured of the crown, he might have placed his son on the throne, and spared France the carnage of Mont St. Jean. The Emperor descending from his throne, to place on it his son, and peace, would have added, no doubt, a noble page to his history: but, ought he to have accepted the loose proposals of M. Werner, and trusted to the faith of his enemies? I think not. The first question to be decided, before treating of a regency, was this: What is to be done with Napoleon? and it has been seen, that on this point the allies held the profoundest silence.

I am far from thinking, that the Emperor would have consented in any case, to lay aside his crown, which he considered as the price of twenty years toil and victory; I only maintain, that he cannot be blamed on this occasion, for having retained it.

This confidential avowal to his courtiers is not the only indiscretion, of which they laid hold, to charge him with imaginary faults. What will appear surprising is, that, with the character for negation and dissimulation ascribed to him, he was capable of indiscretions.

Napoleon conceived in secret, and conducted to their close in mystery, schemes, that did not call his passions into play, because then he never ceased to be master of himself: but it was excessively rare for him, to preserve a continued, and complete dissimulation in affairs, that strongly agitated his soul. The object, on which he was then occupied, assailed his mind, and heated his imagination: his head, continually at work, abounded in ideas, that diffused themselves in spite of him, and displayed themselves externally by broken words, and demonstrations of joy or anger, that afforded a clew to his designs, and entirely destroyed the mystery, in which he would have enveloped them.

This narration, which I would not interrupt, has made me lose sight of Napoleon. I left him meditating the constitution he had promised the French, and now return to him.

Napoleon had at first announced his intention of amalgamating the ancient constitutions with the charter, and composing from the whole a new constitution, which should be subjected to the free discussion of the delegates of the nation. But he thought, that present circumstances, and the agitation of men's minds, would not permit subjects of such high importance, to be debated publicly without danger; and he resolved to confine himself for the moment, to sanction by a particular act, supplementary to the constitutions of the empire, the new guarantees, that he had promised the nation.

Napoleon was swayed also by another consideration. He considered the constitutions of the empire as the title-deeds of his crown; and he was afraid, if he annulled them, that he should effect a sort of novation, that would give him the appearance of beginning a new reign. For Napoleon, such is human weakness, after having devoted to ridicule the pretensions of "_the King of Hartwell_," was inclined to persuade himself, that his own reign had not been interrupted by his residence in the island of Elba.

The Emperor had entrusted to M. Benjamin Constant, and to a committee composed of ministers of state, the double task of preparing the bases of a new constitution. After having seen and amalgamated their labours, he subjected the result to the examination of the council of state, and of the council of ministers. Toward the end of the discussion, Napoleon suggested the idea of not submitting this constitution to public debate, but presenting it only as an additional act to the preceding constitutions. This idea was combated unanimously. M. Benjamin Constant, the Duke Decrès, the Duke of Otranto, the Duke of Vicenza, &c. &c., remonstrated with the Emperor, that this was not what he had promised France; that a new constitution was expected from him, purged from the despotic acts of the senate; and that he must fulfil the expectations of the nation, or prepare to lose its confidence for ever.

The Emperor promised to reflect on it: but, after having weighed in his sagacity the observations, that had been submitted to him, he persisted in his scheme; and the next day the additional act appeared in the Moniteur in the following form:

ADDITIONAL ACT.

Paris, April the 24th.

Napoleon, by the grace of God and the constitutions, Emperor of the French, to all present and to come, health.

Since we were called, fifteen years ago, by the wishes of France, to the government of the empire, we have sought to bring to perfection, at different periods, the forms of the constitution, according to the wants and desires of the nation, and profiting by the lessons of experience.

Thus the constitution of the empire has been formed by a series of acts, which have been invested with the acceptance of the people. We had then for our object, to organize a grand European federal system, which we had adopted as conformable to the spirit of the age, and favourable to the progress of civilization. To effect its completion, and give it all the extension and stability, of which it is susceptible, we had adjourned the establishment of several domestic institutions, more particularly designed to protect the liberty of the citizens. Our object is nothing more henceforward, than to increase the prosperity of France by the confirmation of public liberty; whence results the necessity of several important modifications of the constitution, the decrees of the senate, and other acts, by which this empire is governed.

For these reasons, willing, on the one hand, to retain whatever is good and salutary of the past, and on the other to render the constitution of our empire conformable in every respect to the wishes and wants of the nation, as well as to that state of peace, which we are desirous of maintaining with Europe, we have resolved, to propose to the people a series of arrangements, tending to modify and improve its acts, to surround the rights of citizens with all their guarantees, to give to the representative system its full extent, to invest the intermediate bodies with the respectability and powers that are desirable; in a word, to combine the highest degree of political liberty, and personal security, with the strength and concentration necessary, to render the independence of the French people, and the dignity of our crown, respected by foreigners: in consequence, the following articles, forming an act supplementary to the constitution of the empire, will be submitted to the free and solemn acceptance of all the citizens, throughout the whole extent of France[5].

[Footnote 5: This preamble, which gave the death-blow to the additional act, was, I believe, the work of M. Benjamin Constant.]

HEAD I.

_General provisions._

ART. 1. The constitution of the empire, consisting of the constitutional act of the 22d of Frimaire, year 8; of the decrees of the senate of the 14th and 16th of Thermidor, year 10; and of that of the 28th of Floreal, year 12; will be modified by the provisions following: all the rest of their provisions are maintained and confirmed.

ART. 2. The legislative power is exercised by the Emperor and by two chambers.

ART. 3. The first chamber, styled the chamber of peers, is hereditary.

ART. 4. The Emperor names its members, who are irremovable, they and their male descendants, from eldest to eldest, in direct descent. The number of peers is unlimited. Adoption does not transmit the dignity of the peerage to the person adopted. The peers take their seats at the age of twenty-one; but have no deliberative voice before the age of twenty-five.

ART. 5. The chamber of peers has for its president the archchancellor of the empire, or, in the case provided for by article 5 of the decree of the senate of the 28th of Floreal, year 12, by one of the members of the chamber appointed by the Emperor.

ART. 6. The members of the imperial family, in hereditary succession, are peers by right. They are seated next to the president. They take their seats at the age of eighteen, but have no deliberative voice before the age of twenty-one.

ART. 7. The second chamber, styled the chamber of representatives, is elected by the people.

ART. 8. The members of this chamber are to the number of six hundred and twenty-nine: they must be twenty-five years of age at least.

ART. 9. The president of the chamber of representatives is appointed by the chamber at the opening of the session. He remains in office, till the chamber is renewed. His appointment is submitted to the approbation of the Emperor.

ART. 10. The chamber of representatives verifies the powers of its members, and decides on the validity of contested elections.

ART. 11. The members of the chamber of representatives receive for travelling expenses, and during the session, the indemnity decreed by the constituent assembly.

ART. 12. They are re-eligible without limit.

ART. 13. The chamber of representatives is entirely renewed, of right, every five years.

ART. 14. No member of either chamber can be arrested, except in case of being taken in the fact of committing a crime; or prosecuted for a criminal or correctional cause, during the sessions, except in consequence of a resolution of the chamber to which he belongs.

ART. 15. No one can be arrested or detained for debt, from the time of convening the meeting till forty days after the session.

ART. 16. The peers are to be tried by their own chamber in criminal or correctional cases, according to the forms prescribed by the law.

ART. 17. The quality of peer and of representative is compatible with all public functions, except those that are responsible (_comptables_).

All prefects and subprefects are not eligible by the electoral college of the department or circle (_arrondissement_), for which they are serving.

ART. 18. The Emperor sends to the chambers the ministers of state, and counsellors of state, who sit, and take a part in the discussions, but have no deliberative voice, unless they are members of the chamber, either as peers or being elected by the people.

ART. 19. The ministers, who are members of the chamber of peers, or of that of representatives, or who sit in consequence of being sent by the government, will give the chambers the information deemed necessary, when making it public does not compromise the interests of the state.

ART. 20. The sittings of both chambers are public. Nevertheless, they may resolve themselves into secret committees; the chamber of peers on the demand of ten members, that of deputies on the demand of twenty-five. The government also may demand secret committees for any communications it may have to make. In all cases deliberations and votes can take place only in a public sitting.

ART. 21. The Emperor may prorogue, adjourn, or dissolve, the chamber of representatives. The proclamation, that pronounces the dissolution, convokes the electoral colleges for a new election, and indicates the re-assembling of representatives in six months at the latest.

ART. 22. During the interval between the sessions of the chamber of representatives, or in case of the dissolution of this chamber, the chamber of peers cannot assemble.

ART. 23. The government has the proposal of the law: the chambers may propose amendments: if these amendments be not adopted by the government, the chambers are bound to vote for or against the law, in the form in which it was proposed.

ART. 24. The chambers have the power of inviting the government to propose a law on a given subject, and to draw up what appears to them proper to be inserted in the law. This demand may be made by either of the two chambers.

ART. 25. When a draught of a law is adopted by one of the two chambers, it is carried to the other; and, if it be approved there, it is carried to the Emperor.

ART. 26. No written discourse, except the reports of committees, the reports of ministers on the laws that are presented, and the accounts that are delivered, can be read in either of the chambers.

HEAD II.

_Of the electoral colleges, and the mode of election._

ART. 27. The electoral colleges of the departments and circles are retained, conformably to the decree of the senate of the 16th of Thermidor, year 10, excepting the following modifications.

ART. 28. The district assemblies (_les assemblées de canton_) will fill up every year, by annual elections, all the vacancies in the electoral colleges.

ART. 29. From the year 1816, a member of the chamber of peers, appointed by the Emperor, will be president of the electoral college of each department for life, and not removable.

ART. 30. Dating from the same period, the electoral college of each department will appoint, from among the members of the college of each circle, the president and two vice-presidents: for this purpose the assembling of the electoral college of the department will precede that of the college of the circle fifteen days.

ART. 31. The colleges of departments and circles will appoint the number of representatives established for each by the annexed table and act, No. 1.[6]

[Footnote 6: This table, and that mentioned in Art. 33, being of no importance, are not inserted here.]

ART. 32. The representatives may be chosen throughout the whole extent of France indifferently.

Every college of a department or circle, that shall choose a member not belonging to the department or circle, shall appoint a substitute (_suppléant_), who must necessarily be taken from the department or circle.

ART. 33. Manufacturing and commercial labour and property shall have a particular representation.

The election of commercial and manufacturing representatives shall be made by the electoral college of the department from a list of eligible persons, drawn up by the chambers of commerce and consulting chambers in conjunction, according to the annexed table and act, No. 2.

HEAD III.

_Of the law of taxation._

ART. 34. Direct general taxes, whether on land or personal property, are voted only for one year: indirect taxes may be voted for several years. In case of a dissolution of the chamber of representatives, the taxes voted in the preceding session are continued, till the chamber meets anew.

ART. 35. No tax, direct or indirect, in money or in kind, can be levied; no loan can take place; no entry of credit in the great book of the public debt can be made; no domain can be alienated or exchanged; no raising of men for the army can be ordered; no portion of territory can be exchanged; except by virtue of a law.

ART. 36. No proposal of a tax, of a loan, or of a levy of men, can be made, except in the chamber of representatives.

ART. 37. It is in the chamber of representatives also, that, 1st, the general budget of the state, containing an estimate of the receipts, and the proposal of the funds assigned for the year to each department of the ministry; and, 2dly, an account of the receipts and expenses of the year, or years, preceding; are to be introduced in the first instance.

HEAD IV.

_Of ministers and their responsibility._

ART. 38. All the acts of the government must be countersigned by a minister having some department.

ART. 39. The ministers are responsible for the acts of government signed by them, as well as for the execution of the laws.

ART. 40. They may be accused by the chamber of representatives, and are to be tried by that of peers.

ART. 41. Every minister, every commander of an army by land or sea, may be accused by the chamber of representatives, and tried by the chamber of peers, for having compromised the safety or honour of the nation.