BOOK III

Entry of the Allies into Paris--Bonaparte at Fontainebleau--The Regency at Blois--Publication of my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_--The Senate issues the decree of dethronement--The house in the Rue Saint-Florentin--M. de Talleyrand--Addresses of the Provisional Government--Constitution proposed by the Senate--Arrival of the Comte d'Artois--Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau--Napoleon's itinerary to the island of Elba--Louis XVIII. at Compiègne--His entry into Paris--The Old Guard--An irreparable mistake--The Declaration of Saint-Ouen--Treaty of Paris--The Charter--Departure of the Allies--First year of the Restoration--First ministry--I publish my _Réflexions Politiques_-Madame la Duchesse de Duras--I am appointed Ambassador to Sweden--Exhumation of the remains of Louis XVI.--The first 21st of January at Saint-Denis.

God had pronounced one of those words by which the silence of eternity is at rare intervals interrupted. Then, in the midst of the present generation, rose the hammer that struck the hour which Paris had only once heard sound: on the 25th of December 496, Rheims announced the baptism of Clovis, and the gates of Lutetia opened to the Franks; on the 30th of March 1814, after the baptism of blood of Louis XVI., the old hammer, which had so long remained motionless, rose once more in the belfry of the ancient monarchy: a second stroke resounded, the Tartars penetrated into Paris. In the interval of thirteen hundred and eighteen years, the foreigner had insulted the walls of the capital of our empire without ever being able to enter it, except when he glided in, summoned by our own divisions. The Normans besieged the city of the _Parisii_; the _Parisii_ gave flight to the hawks which they carried on their wrists; Odo[128], child of Paris and future King, "_rex futurus_," Abbon[129] says, drove back the pirates of the North: the Parisians let fly their eagles in 1814; the Allies entered the Louvre.

Bonaparte had waged an unjust war against Alexander, his admirer, who had begged on his knees for peace; Bonaparte had ordered the carnage of the Moskowa; he had forced the Russians themselves to bum Moscow; Bonaparte had plundered Berlin, humiliated its King, insulted its Queen[130]: what reprisals were we, then, to expect? You shall see.

I had wandered in the Floridas round unknown monuments, devastated of old by conquerors of whom no trace remains, and I was saved for the sight of the Caucasian hordes encamped in the court-yard of the Louvre. In those events of history which, according to Montaigne, "are but weake testimonies of our worth and capacity[131]," my tongue cleaves to my palate: _adhæret lingua mea faucibus meis._[132]

The Allied Army entered Paris on the 31st of March 1814, at mid-day, ten days only after the anniversary of the death of the Duc d'Enghien, 21 March 1804. Was it worth Bonaparte's while to commit an action of such long remembrance for a reign which was to last so short a time? The Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia rode at the head of their troops. I saw them defile along the boulevards. Feeling stupefied and dumfoundered within myself, as though my name as a Frenchman had been tom from me to substitute for it the name by which I was thenceforth to be known in the mines of Siberia, I felt, at the same time, my exasperation increase against the man whose glory had reduced us to that disgrace.

Nevertheless, this first invasion of the Allies has remained unparalleled in the annals of the world: order, peace and moderation reigned on every hand; the shops were re-opened; Russian guardsmen, six feet tall, were piloted through the streets by little French rogues who made fun of them, as of jumping-jacks and carnival maskers. The conquered might be taken for the conquerors; the latter, trembling at their successes, looked as though they were excusing themselves. The National Guard alone garrisoned the interior of Paris, with the exception of the houses in which the foreign Kings and Princes were lodged[133]. On the 31st of March 1814, countless armies were occupying France; a few months later all those troops passed back across our frontiers, without firing a musket-shot, without shedding a drop of blood after the return of the Bourbons. Old France found herself enlarged on some of her frontiers; the ships and stores of Antwerp were divided with her; three hundred thousand prisoners, scattered over the countries where victory or defeat had left them, were restored to her. After five and twenty years of fighting, the clash of arms ceased from one end of Europe to the other. Alexander departed, leaving us the master-pieces which we had conquered and the liberty lodged in the Charter, a liberty which we owed as much to his enlightenment as to his influence. The head of two supreme authorities, twice an autocrat by the sword and by religion, he alone, of all the sovereigns of Europe, had understood that, at the age of civilization which France had attained, she could be governed only by virtue of a free constitution.

In our very natural hostility to the foreigners, we have confused the invasion of 1814 and that of 1815, which were in no sense alike.

[Sidenote: The Emperor Alexander.]

Alexander looked upon himself merely as an instrument of Providence, and took no credit to himself. When Madame de Staël complimented him upon the happiness which his subjects, lacking a constitution, enjoyed of being governed by him, he made his well-known reply:

"I am only a 'fortunate accident.'"

A young man in the streets of Paris expressed to him his admiration at the affability with which he received the least of the citizens; he replied:

"For what else are sovereigns made?"

He refused to inhabit the Tuileries, remembering that Bonaparte had taken his ease in the palaces of Vienna, Berlin and Moscow.

Looking at the statue of Napoleon on the column in the Place Vendôme, he said:

"If I were so high up, I should be afraid of becoming giddy."

As he was going over the Palace of the Tuileries, they showed him the Salon de la Paix:

"Of what use," he asked, laughing, "was this room to Bonaparte?"

On the day of Louis XVIII.'s entry into Paris, Alexander hid himself behind a window, wearing no mark of distinction, to watch the procession as it passed.

Alexander sometimes had elegantly affectionate manners. Visiting a mad-house, he asked a woman if there were many women "mad through love":

"Not at present," replied she; "but it is to be feared that the number has increased since the moment of Your Majesty's entry into Paris."

One of Napoleon's great dignitaries said to the Tsar:

"Your arrival has long been expected and wished for, Sire."

"I should have come sooner," he replied; "you must blame only French valour for my delay."

It is certain that, when crossing the Rhine, he had regretted that he was not able to retire in peace to the midst of his family.

At the Hôtel des Invalides, he found the maimed soldiers who had defeated him at Austerlitz: they were silent and gloomy; one heard nothing save the noise of their wooden legs in their deserted yard and their denuded church. Alexander was touched by this noise of brave men: he ordered that twelve Russian guns should be given back to them.

A proposal was made to him to change the name of the Pont d'Austerlitz:

"No," he said, "it is enough for me to have crossed the bridge with my army."

Alexander had something calm and sad about him. He went about Paris, on horse-back or on foot, without a suite and without affectation. He appeared astonished at his triumph; his almost melting gaze wandered over a population whom he seemed to regard as superior to himself: one would have said that he thought himself a Barbarian among us, even as a Roman felt shame-faced in Athens. Perhaps, also, he reflected that these same Frenchmen had appeared in his fired capital; that his soldiers, in their turn, were masters of Paris, in which he might have been able to find again some of those now extinguished torches by which Moscow was freed and consumed. This destiny, these changing fortunes, this common misery of peoples and of kings were bound to make a profound impression upon a mind so religious as his.

*

What was the victor of the Borodino doing? So soon as he had heard of Alexander's resolution, he had sent orders to Major Maillard de Lescourt of the Artillery to blow up the Grenelle powder-magazine: Rostopschin had set fire to Moscow, but he had first sent away the inhabitants. From Fontainebleau, to which he had returned, Napoleon marched to Villejuif; thence he threw a glance over Paris: foreign soldiers were guarding its gates; the conqueror remembered the days in which his grenadiers kept watch on the ramparts of Berlin, Moscow, and Vienna.

Events destroy other events; how poor a thing to-day appears to us the grief of Henry IV. learning of the death of Gabrielle at Villejuif, and returning to Fontainebleau! Bonaparte also returned to that solitude; he was awaited there only by the memory of his august prisoner: the captive of peace[134] had gone from the palace in order to leave it free for the captive of war, so swiftly does "misfortune" fill up its "places."

[Sidenote: Flight of the Empire.]

The Regency had retired to Blois. Bonaparte had given orders for the Empress and the King of Rome to leave Paris, saying that he would rather see them at the bottom of the Seine than led back in triumph to Vienna; but, at the same time, he had enjoined Joseph to remain in the capital. His brother's retreat made him furious, and he accused the ex-King of Spain of ruining all. The ministers, the members of the Regency, Napoleon's brothers, his wife and his son arrived in disorder at Blois, swept away in the downfall; military waggons, baggage-vans, carriages, everything was there; the King's own coaches were there and were dragged through the mud of the Beauce to Chambord, the only morsel of France left to the heir of Louis XIV. Some of the ministers did not stop here, but proceeded as far as Brittany to hide themselves, while Cambacérès lolled in a sedan-chair in the steep streets of Blois. Various rumours were current: there was talk of two camps and of a general requisition. During several days, they were ignorant of what was happening in Paris; the uncertainty did not cease until the arrival of a waggoner whose pass was signed "Sacken[135]." Soon the Russian General Schouvaloff[136] alighted at the Auberge de la Galère: he was suddenly besieged by the grandees, and entreated to obtain a visa for their stampede. However, before leaving Blois, all drew upon the funds of the Regency for their travelling-expenses and their arrears of salary; they held their passports in one hand and their money in the other, taking care at the same time to send in their adhesion to the Provisional Government, for they did not lose their heads. Madame Mère[137] and her brother, Cardinal Fesch[138], left for Rome. Prince Esterhazy[139] came on behalf of Francis II. to fetch Marie-Louise and her son. Joseph and Jerome[140] withdrew to Switzerland, after vainly trying to compel the Empress to attach herself to their fate. Marie-Louise hastened to join her father: indifferently attached to Bonaparte, she found means to console herself and rejoiced at being delivered from the double tyranny of a husband and a master. When, in the following year, Bonaparte revisited that confusion of flight on the Bourbons, the latter, but lately rescued from their long tribulations, had not enjoyed fourteen years of unequalled prosperity in which to accustom themselves to the comforts of the throne.

*

However, Napoleon was not yet dethroned; more than forty thousand of the best soldiers in the world were around him; he was able to retire behind the Loire; the French armies which had arrived from Spain were growling in the South; the military population might bubble over and distribute its lava; even among the foreign leaders, there was still a question of Napoleon or his son reigning over France: for two days, Alexander hesitated. M. de Talleyrand, as I have said, secretly leant towards the policy which tended to crown the King of Rome, for he dreaded the Bourbons; if he did not then accept entirely the plan of the Regency of Marie-Louise, it was because, since Napoleon had not perished, he, the Prince de Bénévent, feared that he would not be able to retain the mastery during a minority threatened by the existence of a restless, erratic, enterprising man, still in the vigour of his age[141].

[Sidenote: _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._]

It was in those critical days that I threw down my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_[142] to turn the scale: its result is well known. I flung myself headlong into the fray to serve as a shield to liberty reviving against tyranny still subsisting, with its strength increased threefold by despair. I spoke in the name of the Legitimacy, in order to add to my words the authority of positive affairs. I taught France what the old Royal Family was; I told her how many members of that Family existed, what their names were, and their character: it was as though I had drawn up a fist of the children of the Emperor of China, to so great an extent had the Republic and the Empire encroached upon the present and relegated the Bourbons to the past. Louis XVIII. declared, as I have already often mentioned, that my pamphlet was of greater profit to him than an army of one hundred thousand men; he might have added that it was a certificate of existence to him. I assisted in giving him the crown a second time by the fortunate issue of the Spanish War.

From the commencement of my political career, I became popular with the crowd; but, from that time also, I failed to make my way with powerful men. All who had been slaves under Bonaparte abhorred me; on the other side, I was an object of suspicion to all who wished to place France in a state of vassalage. At the first moment, among the sovereigns, I had none on my side except Bonaparte himself. He looked through my pamphlet at Fontainebleau: the Duc de Bassano[143] had brought it to him; he discussed it impartially, saying:

"This is true; that is not true. I have nothing to reproach Chateaubriand with: he resisted me when I was in power; but those scoundrels, so and so!" and he named them.

My admiration for Bonaparte was always great and sincere, even at the time when I was attacking Napoleon with the greatest eagerness.

Posterity is not so fair in its judgments as has been held; there are passions, infatuations, errors of distance even as there are passions and errors of proximity. When posterity admires without reserve, it is scandalized that the contemporaries of the man admired should not have had the same idea of that man as itself. This can be explained, however: the things which offended one in that person are past; his infirmities have died with him; all that remains of him is his imperishable life; but the evil which he caused is none the less real: evil in itself and in its essence, and especially for those who endured it.

It is the style of the day to magnify Bonaparte's victories: the sufferers have disappeared; we no longer hear the imprecations, the cries of pain and distress of the victims; we no longer see France exhausted, with only women to till her soil; we no longer see parents arrested as a pledge for their sons, the inhabitants of the villages made jointly and severally responsible for the penalties applicable to a rebellious recruit; we no longer see those conscription placards posted at the street-corners, the passers-by gathered before those enormous lists of dead, seeking in consternation the names of their children, their brothers, their friends, their neighbours. We forget that the whole population bewailed the triumphs; we forget that the slightest allusion against Bonaparte on the stage which had escaped the censors was hailed with rapture; we forget that the people, the Court, the generals, the ministers, Napoleon's relations were weary of his oppressions and his conquests, weary of that game always being won and always being played, of that existence brought into question each morning anew, thanks to the impossibility of repose.

The reality of our sufferings is demonstrated by the catastrophe itself: if France had been infatuated with Bonaparte, would she twice have abandoned him, abruptly, completely, without making one last effort to keep him? If France owed all to Bonaparte: glory, liberty, order, prosperity, industry, commerce, manufactures, monuments, literature, fine arts; if, before his time, the nation had done nothing itself; if the Republic, destitute of genius and courage, had neither defended nor enlarged the territory: then France must have been very ungrateful, very cowardly, to allow Napoleon to fall into the hands of his enemies, or, at least, not to protest against the captivity of so great a benefactor?

[Sidenote: Feeling against Napoleon.]

This reproach, which might justly be made against us, is not made against us, however: and why? Because it is evident that, at the moment of his fall, France did not desire to defend Napoleon; in our bitter mortification, we beheld in him only the author and the contemner of our wretchedness. The Allies did not defeat us: we ourselves, choosing between two scourges, renounced shedding our blood, which had ceased to flow for our liberties.

The Republic had been very cruel, doubtless, but every one hoped that it would pass, that sooner or later we should recover our rights, while retaining the preservatory conquests which it had given us on the Alps and the Rhine. All the victories which it gained were won in our name; with the Republic, there was no question save of France; it was always France that had triumphed, that had conquered; it was our soldiers who had done all and for whom triumphal or funeral feasts were organized; the generals, and some were very great, obtained an honourable but modest place in the public memory: such were Marceau[144], Moreau, Hoche[145], Joubert[146]; the two last seemed destined to replace Bonaparte, who, in the dawn of his glory, suddenly crossed the path of General Hoche and, by his jealousy, rendered illustrious that warlike pacificator who died unexpectedly after his triumphs of Altkirchen, Neuwied and Kleinnister.

Under the Empire, we disappeared; we were no longer mentioned, everything belonged to Bonaparte: "_I_ have ordered, _I_ have conquered, _I_ have spoken; _my_ eagles, _my_ crown, _my_ family, _my_ subjects."

What happened, however, in those two positions, at the same time similar and opposite? We did not abandon the Republic in its reverses; it killed us, but it honoured us; we had not the disgrace of being the property of a man; thanks to our efforts, it was never invaded; the Russians, defeated beyond the mountains, met with their end at Zurich[147].

As for Bonaparte, he, despite his enormous acquisitions, succumbed, not because he was conquered, but because France would have no more of him. How great a lesson! May it ever make us remember that there is cause of death in all that offends the dignity of man.

Independent minds of every shade and opinion were employing uniform language at the time of the publication of my pamphlet. La Fayette, Camille Jordan[148], Ducis, Lemercier[149], Lanjuinais[150], Madame de Staël, Chénier, Benjamin Constant, Le Brun[151] thought and wrote as I did[152].

God, in His patient eternity, brings justice sooner or later: at moments when Heaven seems to slumber, it is always a fine thing that the disapproval of an honest man should keep watch and remain as a curb upon the absolute power. France will not disown the noble souls which protested against her servitude, when all lay prostrate, when there were so many advantages in so lying, so many favours to receive in return for flattery, so many persecutions to undergo in return for sincerity. Honour then to the La Fayettes, the de Staëls, the Benjamin Constants, the Camille Jordans, the Ducis, the Lemerciers, the Lanjuinais, the Chéniers, who, standing erect amidst the grovelling crowd of peoples and of kings, dared to despise victory and protest against tyranny!

*

[Sidenote: Napoleon deposed.]

On the 2nd of April, the Senators, to whom we owe one clause only of the Charter of 1814, the contemptible clause preserving their pensions, decreed the deposition of Bonaparte. If this decree, which emancipated France but brought infamy upon those who issued it, offers an affront to the human race, at the same time it teaches posterity the price of grandeurs and fortune, when these have disdained to take their stand upon bases of morality, justice and liberty.

DECREE OF THE CONSERVATIVE SENATE.

"The Conservative Senate, taking into consideration that in a constitutional monarchy the monarch exists only by virtue of the constitution or the social compact;

"That Napoleon Bonaparte, for some time maintaining a firm and prudent government, had given the nation cause to reckon, in the future, upon acts of wisdom and justice; but that subsequently he destroyed the compact which united him to the French people, notably by levying imports and establishing taxes, otherwise than by virtue of the law, against the express tenor of the oath which he took on his accession to the throne, in conformity with Clause 53 of the Constitutions of the 28 Floréal Year XII.;

"That he was guilty of this attempt upon the rights of the people at the very time when he had without necessity adjourned the Legislative Body, and caused a report made by that body, whose title and whose relation to the national representation he contested, to be suppressed as criminal;

"That he undertook a series of wars in violation of Clause 50 of the Act settling the Constitution of the Year VIII., which lays down that any declaration of war shall be proposed, discussed, decreed and promulgated like the laws;

"That he has unconstitutionally issued several decrees bearing the penalty of death, namely, the two decrees of the 5th of March last, tending to cause a war to be considered as national which was undertaken only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition;

"That he has violated the laws of the Constitution by his decrees concerning the State prisons;

"That he has annihilated the responsibility of the ministers, put down all the powers and destroyed the independence of the courts of jurisdiction;

"Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press, established and perpetuated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts, with false maxims, with doctrines favourable to despotism and with outrages against foreign governments;

"That acts and reports, passed by the Senate, have undergone alterations when made public;

"Taking into consideration that, instead of reigning with a sole view to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people, according to the terms of his oath, Napoleon has completed the misfortunes of the country by his refusal to treat on conditions which the national interest obliged him to accept and which did not compromise the honour of France; by his abuse of all the means entrusted to him in men and money; by his abandonment of the wounded without aid, medical requisites, or supplies; by various measures which resulted in the ruin of the towns, the depopulation of the rural districts, famine and infectious disease;

"Taking into consideration that, owing to all these causes, the Imperial Government established by the Senatus-Consultum of the 28 Floréal Year XII., or 18 May 1804, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest desires of all Frenchmen call into being an order of things of which the first result would be the restoration of general peace, and which would also mark the epoch of a solemn reconciliation between all the States of the great family of Europe, the Senate declares and decrees as follows: Napoleon deposed from the throne; hereditary right abolished in his family; the French people and the army released from their oath of fidelity to him."

The Roman Senate was less harsh when it declared Nero a public enemy: history is but a repetition of the same facts applied to varying men and times.

Can one picture to one's self the Emperor reading this official document at Fontainebleau? What must he have thought of what he had done, and of the men whom he had summoned to be his accomplices in his oppression of our liberties? When I published my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, could I have expected to see it amplified and converted into a decree of deposition by the Senate? What prevented those legislators, in the days of prosperity, from discovering the evils of which they reproached Bonaparte with being the author, from perceiving that the Constitution had been violated? What zeal suddenly seized these mutes for "the liberty of the press"? How did they, who had overwhelmed Napoleon with adulation upon his return from each of his wars, now come to find that he had undertaken those wars "only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition"? How did they, who had flung him so many conscripts to devour, suddenly melt at the thought of the wounded soldiers "abandoned without aid, medical requisites, or supplies"? There are times at which contempt should be but frugally dispensed, because of the large number of those in need of it: I pity them for this moment, because they will need it again during and after the Hundred Days.

[Sidenote: By the Decree of the Senate.]

When I ask what Napoleon at Fontainebleau thought of the acts of the Senate, his answer was made: an Order of the Day of 5 April 1814, not published officially, but printed in different newspapers outside the capital, thanked the army for its fidelity, adding:

"The Senate has allowed itself to dispose of the government of France; it has forgotten that it owes to the Emperor the power which it is now abusing; that it was he who saved one part of its members from the storms of the Revolution, drew the other from obscurity and protected it against the hatred of the nation. The Senate relies upon the clauses of the Constitution to overthrow it; it is not ashamed to utter reproaches against the Emperor, without remarking that, in its capacity as the first body of the State, it took part in all the events. The Senate is not ashamed to speak of the libels published against the foreign governments: it forgets that these were drawn up in its midst. So long as fortune remained faithful to their Sovereign, these men remained faithful, and no complaint was heard of the abuses of power. If the Emperor had despised men, as he has been reproached with doing, then the world would recognise to-day that he has had reasons which justified his contempt."

This was a homage rendered by Bonaparte himself to the liberty of the press: he must have believed that there was some good in it, since it offered him a last shelter and a last aid.

And I, who am struggling with time, I, who am striving to make it give an account of what it has seen, I, who am writing this so long after the events that are past, under the reign of Philip, the counterfeit heir of so great an inheritance, what am I in the hands of that time, that great devourer of the centuries which I thought fixed, of that time which makes me whirl with itself through space?

*

Alexander had taken up his residence at M. de Talleyrand's[153]. I was not present at the cabals: you can read about them in the narratives of the Abbé de Pradt[154] and of the various intriguers who handled in their dirty and paltry paws the fate of one of the greatest men in history and the destiny of the world. I counted for nothing in politics, outside the masses; there was no plotting understrapper but enjoyed far more right and favour in the ante-chambers than I: a coming figure in the possible Restoration, I waited beneath the windows, in the street.

Through the machinations of the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin, the Conservative Senate appointed a Provisional Government composed of General Beurnonville[155], Senator Jaucourt[156], the Duc de Dalberg[157], the Abbé de Montesquiou[158] and Dupont de Nemours[159]; the Prince de Bénévent helped himself to the presidency.

[Sidenote: The provisional government.]

On meeting this name for the first time, I ought to speak of the personage who took a remarkable part in the affairs of that time; but I reserve his portrait for the end of my Memoirs.

The intrigue which kept M. de Talleyrand in Paris, at the time of the entry of the Allies, was the cause of his successes at the commencement of the Restoration. The Emperor of Russia knew him from having seen him at Tilsit[160]. In the absence of the French authorities, Alexander took up his quarters in the Hôtel de l'Infantado[161], which the owner hastened to offer him.

From that time forth, M. de Talleyrand passed for the arbiter of the world; his apartments became the centre of the negociations. Composing the Provisional Government to his own liking, he there placed the partners of his rubber: the Abbé de Montesquiou figured in it only as an advertisement of the Legitimacy.

To the Bishop of Autun's sterility were confided the first labours of the Restoration: he infected that Restoration with barrenness, and communicated to it a germ of blight and death.

*

The first acts of the Provisional Government, placed under the dictatorship of its chairman, were proclamations addressed to the soldiers and to the people:

"Soldiers," they said to the former, "France has shattered the yoke under which she and you had been groaning for so many years. See all that you have suffered at the hands of tyranny. Soldiers, the time has come to put an end to the ills of the country. You are her noblest children; you cannot belong to him who has ravaged her, who tried to make your name hated by all the nations, who might perhaps have compromised your glory, were it possible for a man WHO IS NOT EVEN A FRENCHMAN ever to impair the honour of our arms and the generosity of our soldiers[162]."

And so, in the eyes of his most servile slaves, he who had won so many victories was no longer "even a Frenchman"! When, in the days of the League, Du Bourg surrendered the Bastille to Henry IV., he refused to doff the black scarf and to take the money which was offered him for the surrender of the stronghold. Urged to recognise the King, he replied that "he was no doubt a very good Prince, but that he had pledged his faith to M. de Mayenne[163]; that, moreover, Brissac[164] was a traitor, and that, to prove it to him, he would fight him between four pikes, in the King's presence, and would eat the heart out of his body."

A difference of times and men!

[Sidenote: Its first acts.]

On the 4th of April, appeared a new address of the Provisional Government to the People of France; it said:

"On emerging from your civil discords, you chose as your leader a man who appeared upon the world's stage endowed with the characteristics of greatness. On the ruins of anarchy he founded only despotism; he ought at least out of gratitude to have _become a Frenchman_ like yourselves: he has never been one. Without aim or object, he has never ceased to undertake unjust wars, like an adventurer seeking fame. Perhaps he is still dreaming of his gigantic designs, even while unequalled reverses are inflicting such striking punishment upon the pride and abuse of victory. He has not known how to reign either in the national interest or even in the interest of his own despotism. He has destroyed all that he wished to create, and re-created all that he wished to destroy. He believed in force alone; to-day force overwhelms him: a just retribution for an insensate ambition."

Incontestable truths and well-earned curses; but who was it that uttered those curses? What became of my poor little pamphlet, squeezed in between those virulent addresses? Did it not disappear entirely? On the same day, the 4th of April, the Provisional Government proscribed the signs and emblems of the Imperial Government: if the Arc de Triomphe had existed, it would have been pulled down. Mailhe[165], who was the first to vote for the death of Louis XVI., Cambacérès, who was the first to greet Napoleon by the title of Emperor, eagerly recognised the acts of the Provisional Government.

On the 6th, the Senate drafted a constitution: it rested nearly on the bases of the future Charter; the Senate was preserved as an Upper Chamber; the senatorial dignity was declared permanent and hereditary; to the title to their property was attached the endowment of the senatorships; the Constitution made those titles and properties transmissible to the descendants of the holder: fortunately, those ignoble hereditary rights bore the Fates within themselves, as the ancients used to say.

The sordid effrontery of those senators, who, in the midst of the invasion of their country, did not for a moment lose sight of themselves, strikes one even in the immensity of public events.

Would it not have been more convenient for the Bourbons, on attaining power, to adopt the established government, a dumb Legislative Body, a secret and servile Senate, a fettered press? On reflexion, one finds the thing to be impossible: the natural liberties, righting themselves in the absence of the arm that bent them, would have resumed their vertical line under the weakness of the compression. If the legitimate Princes had disbanded Bonaparte's army, as they ought to have done (this was Napoleon's opinion in the island of Elba), and if, at the same time, they had retained the Imperial Government, to break the instrument of glory in order to keep only the instrument of tyranny would have been too much: the Charter was the ransom of Louis XVIII.

*

On the 12th of April, the Comte d'Artois arrived in the quality of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. Three or four hundred men went on horseback to meet him: I was one of the band. He charmed one with his kindly grace, different from the manners of the Empire. The French recognised with pleasure in his person their old manners, their old politeness and their old language; the crowd pressed round him, a consoling apparition of the past, a twofold protection as he was against the conquering foreigner and against the still threatening Bonaparte. Alas, the Prince was setting his foot again on French soil only to see his son assassinated there and to go back to die in the land of exile whence he was returning: there are men round whose necks life has been flung like a chain!

I had been presented to the King's brother; he had been given my pamphlet to read, otherwise he would not have known my name: he remembered to have seen me neither at the Court of Louis XVI. nor at the Camp of Thionville, and he had doubtless never heard speak of the _Génie du Christianisme._ That was very simple. When one has suffered much and long, he remembers only himself: personal misfortune is a somewhat cold, yet exacting companion; it possesses you; it leaves no room for any other feeling, never quits you, seizes hold of your knees and your couch.

[Sidenote: Napoleon's abdication.]

The day before the entry of the Comte d'Artois, Napoleon, after some useless negociations with Alexander through the intermediary of M. de Caulaincourt, had published his act of abdication:

"The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, true to his oath, declares that he renounces for himself and his heirs the throne of France and Italy, because there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to make to the interests of the French."

To these sensational words the Emperor did not delay, by his return, to give a no less sensational contradiction: he needed only the time to go to Elba. He remained at Fontainebleau till the 20th of April.

The 20th of April having arrived, Napoleon went down the double flight of steps leading to the peristyle of the deserted palace of the monarchy of the Capets. A few grenadiers, the remnants of the soldiers who conquered Europe, drew up in line in the great court-yard, as though on their last field of battle; they were surrounded by those old trees, the mutilated companions of Francis I. and Henry IV. Bonaparte addressed the last witnesses of his fights in these words:

"Generals, officers, non-commissioned officers and men of my Old Guard, I take my leave of you: for twenty years I have been satisfied with you; I have always found you on the road of glory.

"The Allied Powers have armed all Europe against me, a part of the army has betrayed its duty, and France herself has desired other destinies.

"With you and the brave men who have remained faithful to me, I could have kept up civil war for three years; but France would have been unhappy, which was contrary to the end which I proposed to myself.

"Be faithful to the new King whom France has chosen; do not abandon our dear country, too long unhappy! Love her always, love her well, that dear country!

"Do not pity my lot; I shall always be happy when I know you to be so.

"I could have died; nothing would have been easier to me; but I shall never cease to follow the path of honour. I have yet to write what we have done.

"I cannot embrace you all; but I will embrace your general.... Come, general!"

He pressed General Petit[166] in his arms.

"Bring me the eagle!"

He kissed it.

"Dear eagle! May these kisses resound in the heart of all brave men!... Farewell, my lads!... My good wishes will always accompany you; keep me in remembrance."

These words spoken, Napoleon raised his tent, which covered the world.

*

Bonaparte had applied to the Allies for commissaries, so that he might be protected by them on his journey to the island which the sovereigns granted him as his absolute property and as an installment on the future. Count Schouvaloff was appointed for Russia, General Roller[167] for Austria, Colonel Campbell[168] for England, and Count Waldburg-Truchsess[169] for Prussia: the latter wrote the _Itinerary of Napoleon from Fontainebleau to Elba._ This pamphlet and the Abbé de Pradt's on the Polish Embassy are the two reports by which Napoleon was most pained. No doubt he then regretted the time of his liberal censorship, when he had poor Palm[170], the German bookseller, shot for distributing, at Nuremberg, Herr von Gentz's[171] work, _Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung._ Nuremberg, at the time of the publication of this work, was still a free city, and did not belong to France: ought not Palm to have been able to foresee that conquest?

Count Waldburg begins by relating several conversations that took place at Fontainebleau previous to the departure. He states that Bonaparte awarded the greatest praise to Lord Wellington[172] and inquired as to his character and habits. He excused himself for not having made peace at Prague, Dresden and Frankfort; he agreed that he had been wrong, but that at that time he had had other views.

"I was no usurper," he added, "because I accepted the crown only in compliance with the unanimous wish of the whole nation, whereas Louis XVIII. has usurped it, being called to the throne only by a vile Senate, more than ten of whose members voted for the death of Louis XVI."

[Sidenote: He leaves for Elba.]

Count Waldburg pursues his narrative as follows:

"The Emperor started, with his four carriages, about twelve o'clock on the 21st, not till after he had held a long conversation with General Roller, which he commenced with these words:

"'Well, you heard my speech to the Old Guard yesterday; it pleased you, and you have seen the effect it produced. That is the way to speak and act with them, and if Louis XVIII. does not follow this example, he will never make anything of the French soldier.'...

"From the spot where the French troops ceased, the cries of 'Long live the Emperor!' also had an end. Already in Moulins we saw the white cockades, and the inhabitants saluted us with 'Long live the Allies!' In Lyons, which we passed through at about eleven o'clock at night, a few people collected who received the Emperor with 'Long live Napoleon!' As he had expressed a wish to be escorted by an English frigate to the island of Elba, Colonel Campbell left us at Lyons for the purpose of procuring one either from Toulon or Marseilles.

"About mid-day on the 24th, on this side Valence, Napoleon met Marshal Augereau[173]. Both alighted from their carriages. The Emperor saluted the marshal, embraced him, and took off his hat to him. Augereau returned none of these civilities. The Emperor, as he asked him, 'Where are you off to? Are you going to the Court?' took the marshal by the arm and led him forwards. Augereau replied, his present journey extended only to Lyons. They walked together for a quarter of a league on the road towards Valence, and, according to authentic information, the Emperor reproached the marshal for his proclamation. Among other things he observed:

"'Your proclamation is very silly; why those insults against myself? All you need have said was, "The Nation having pronounced its wish in favour of a new sovereign, the duty of the Army is to conform to it. God save the King! Long live Louis XVIII.!'"

"Augereau, who now likewise thou'd him, reproached him, on the other hand, with his insatiate love of conquest, to which he had sacrificed the happiness of France. At length, tired of the discourse, the Emperor turned suddenly towards the marshal, embraced him, again took off his hat to him, and got into the carriage. Augereau, who stood with his hands behind him, did not move his cap from his head, and as Napoleon was already in the carriage, drew one hand forwards in order to wave, with a mien bordering on contempt, a kind of farewell....

"On the 25th, as we arrived at Orange, we were received with 'Long live the King! Long live Louis XVIII.!'

"On the same morning, close to Avignon, where the relays of horses awaited us, the Emperor found a crowd assembled, whose tumultuous cries saluted him with 'Long live the King! Long live the Allies! Down with Nicolas! Down with the tyrant, the scoundrel, the wretched beggar!' and still coarser abuse. In compliance with our instructions, we did everything in our power to lighten the evil, but could only partially effect it.... The people ... likewise conceived that we should not deny them the liberty of venting their indignation against the man who had made them so unhappy, and even had the intention of rendering them still more miserable.... In Orgon, the next place where we changed horses, the conduct of the populace was most outrageous. Exactly on the spot where the horses were taken out, a gallows was erected, on which a figure in French uniform, sprinkled with blood, was suspended. On its breast it bore a paper with this inscription:

[Sidenote: Napoleon insulted.]

"'Sooner or later this will be the Tyrant's fate.'

"The rabble pressed around his carriage, and elevated themselves on both sides in order to look and cast in their abuse. The Emperor pressed into a corner behind General Bertrand[174], and looked pale and disfigured; but at length, through our assistance, he was happily brought off.

"Count Schouwaloff harangued the people from the side of Buonaparte's carriage.

"'Are you not ashamed,' said he, 'to insult an unfortunate who has not the means of defending himself? His situation is sufficiently humiliating for one who, expecting to give laws to the world, now finds himself at the mercy of your generosity. Leave him to himself; behold him: you see contempt is the only weapon you ought to employ against this man, who is no longer dangerous. It would be unworthy of the French nation to take any other vengeance.'

"The crowd applauded this harangue, and Buonaparte, seeing the effect it produced, made signs of approbation to Count Schouwaloff, and afterwards thanked him for the service he had rendered him.

"When he had proceeded about a quarter of a league from Orgon he changed his dress in his carriage, put on a plain blue great-coat and a round hat with a white cockade, mounted a post-horse, and rode on before as a courier. As it was some time ere we overtook him, we were perfectly ignorant of his being no longer in the carriage and in Saint Cannat, where the horses were again changed. We still believed him to be in the greatest danger, for the people attempted to break open the doors, which, however, were fortunately locked. Had they succeeded, they would certainly have destroyed General Bertrand, who sat there alone.... Characteristic is the prayer with which some of the women assailed me:

"'For the love of God, deliver him up as a pillage to us! He has so well deserved it, both from you and us, that nothing can be more just than our request!'

"Having overtaken the Emperor's carriage about half a league on the other side of Orgon, it shortly afterwards entered into a miserable public-house, lying on the roadside, called the Calade. We followed it, and here first learnt Buonaparte's disguise, who in this attire had arrived here, accompanied by one courier only. His suite, from the generals to the scullions, were decorated with white cockades, which he appeared previously to have provided himself with. His valet-de-chambre, who came to meet us, begged we would conduct ourselves towards the Emperor as if he were Colonel Campbell, for whom on his arrival he had given himself out. We entered and found in a kind of chamber this former ruler of the world buried in thought, sitting with his head supported by his hand. I did not immediately recognise him, and walked towards him. He started up as he heard somebody approaching, and pointed to his countenance bedewed with tears. He made a sign that I might not discover him, requested me to sit down beside him, and as long as the landlady was in the room, conversed on indifferent subjects. As soon, however, as she was gone out he resumed his former position. We left him alone; he sent, however, to request we would pass backwards and forwards, to prevent any suspicion of his being there. We informed him it was known Colonel Campbell had passed through here the day before on his way to Toulon; on which he determined upon assuming the name of Lord Burghersh. Here we dined, but as the dinner had not been prepared by his own cooks, he had not courage to partake of it, for fear of being poisoned. He felt ashamed, however, at seeing us all eat, both with good appetites and good conscience, and therefore helped himself from every dish, but without swallowing the least morsel. He spat everything out upon his plate or behind his chair. A little bread and a bottle of wine taken from his carriage, and which he divided with us, constituted his whole repast. In other respects he was conversible and extremely friendly towards us. Whenever the landlady, who waited upon us at table, left the room, and he perceived we were alone, he repeated to us his apprehensions for his life, and assured us the French Government had indisputably determined to destroy or arrest him here. A thousand plans passed through his brain how he might escape, and what arrangements ought to be made to deceive the people of Aix, whom he had learnt awaited him by thousands at the post-house. The most eligible plan in his estimation would be to go back again to Lyons, and from thence strike into another road by way of Italy to the island of Elba. This, however, we should on no account have allowed, and we therefore endeavoured to persuade him to proceed either directly to Toulon, or by way of Digne to Fréjus. We assured him that, without our knowledge, it was impossible the French Government would entertain such insidious intentions against him, and although the people allowed themselves the greatest improprieties, they would never charge themselves with a crime of the nature he feared. In order to inform us better, and to convince us the inhabitants of that part of the country meditated his destruction, he related to us what had happened to him as he arrived here alone. The landlady, who did not recognise him, asked him:

"'Well, have you met Buonaparte?'

"He replied in the negative.

"'I am curious,' she answered, 'to see how he will save himself. I do believe the people will murder him: and it must be confessed he has well deserved it, the scoundrel! Tell me, are they going to put him on board ship for his island?'

"'Yes, of course.'

"'They will drown him, I hope?'

"'Oh, no doubt,' returned the Emperor. 'And so you see,' he added, turning towards us, 'the danger I am exposed to.'

[Sidenote: His fears and apprehensions.]

"And now again, with all his apprehensions and indecision, he renewed his solicitations of counsel. He even begged us to look around and see if we could not anywhere discover a private door through which he might slip out, or if the window, whose shutters upon entering he had half-closed at the bottom, was too high for him to jump out in case of need. On examination I found the window was provided with an iron trellis-work on the outside, and threw him into evident consternation as I communicated to him the discovery. At the least noise he started up in terror, and changed colour. After dinner we left him alone, and as we went in and out found him frequently weeping....

"As... General Schouwaloff's Adjutant had... announced that the major part of the populace assembled on the road were dispersed, the Emperor towards midnight determined on proceeding. For greater precaution, however, another disguise was assumed. General Schouwaloff's Adjutant was obliged to put on the blue great-coat and round hat in which the Emperor had reached the inn, that in case of necessity he might be regarded, insulted, or even murdered for him.

"Napoleon, who now pretended to be an Austrian colonel, dressed himself in the uniform of General Roller, with the Order of Theresa, wore my camp cap, and cast over his shoulders General Schouwaloff's mantle. After the Allies had thus equipped him, the carriages drove up, and we were obliged to march them through the other rooms of the inn in a certain order, which had been previously tried in our own chamber. The procession was headed by General Drouot[175]; then came, as Emperor, General Schouwaloff's Adjutant; upon this General-Roller, the Emperor, General Schouwaloff, and lastly, myself, to whom the honour of forming the rear-guard was assigned. The remainder of the Imperial suite united themselves with us as we passed by, and thus we walked through the gaping multitude, who vainly endeavoured to distinguish their Tyrant amongst us. Schouwaloff's Adjutant (Major Olewieff) placed himself in Napoleon's carriage, and the latter sat beside General Roller in his calash....

"Still, however, the Emperor was constantly in alarm. He not only remained in General Roller's calash, but even begged he would allow the servant to smoke who sat before, and asked the General himself if he could sing, in order that he might dissipate, through such familiar conduct, any suspicion in the places where we stopped, that the Emperor sat with him in the carriage. As the General could not sing, Napoleon begged him to whistle, and with this singular music we made our entry into every place; whilst the Emperor, fumigated with the incense of the tobacco-pipe, pressed himself into the corner of the calash, and pretended to be fast asleep....

"At Saint-Maximin he breakfasted with us, and having learnt that the sub-prefect of Aix was there, he ordered him into his presence, and received him with these words:

"'You ought to blush to see me in an Austrian uniform, which I have been obliged to assume to protect myself against the insults of the Provençals. I came among you in full confidence, whilst I might have brought with me six thousand of my guard, and I find nothing but a band of maniacs who put my life in danger. The Provençals are a disgraceful race; they committed every kind of crime and enormity during the Revolution, and are quite ready to begin over again: but when it is a question of fighting bravely, then they are cowards. Provence has never supplied me with a single regiment with which I could be satisfied. But to-morrow they will be as much against Louis XVIII. as to-day they appear to be against me,' etc....

[Sidenote: His protests.]

"To us he again spoke of Louis XVIII., and said he would never effect anything with the French nation if he treated them with too much forbearance. He would, from necessity, be obliged to lay large imposts upon them, and hence cause himself to be immediately hated. He likewise told us that 'eighteen years before, he had marched through this place with some thousand men to liberate two Royalists who were to have been executed for wearing the white cockade. In spite, however, of the fury of the populace with which he had to contend, he fortunately saved them, and to-day, he continued, would that man be murdered by this same populace, who should refuse to wear a white cockade,--so contradictory and vacillating are they in everything they do.'

"Having learnt that two squadrons of Austrian hussars were stationed at Luc, an order was sent at his request to the commanders to await our arrival there, in order to escort the Emperor to Fréjus[176]."

Here ends Count Waldburg's narrative: those accounts are painful to read. What! Were the commissaries unable to afford better protection to him for whom they had the honour to be responsible? Who were they, to affect these airs of superiority with such a man? Bonaparte truly said that, if he had wished, he might have travelled accompanied by a portion of his guard. It is evident that men were indifferent to his fate; they enjoyed his degradation; they gladly acquiesced in the marks of indignity which the victim demanded for his safety: it is so sweet to hold beneath one's feet the destiny of him who walked over the highest heads, to avenge pride with insult! Therefore the commissaries do not expend a word, not even a word of philosophic sensibility, on such a change of fortune, to remind man of his nothingness and of the greatness of the judgments of God! In the ranks of the Allies, Napoleon had had numerous adulators: he who has gone on his knees before brute force is not entitled to triumph over misfortune. Prussia, I admit, had need of an effort of virtue to forget what she had suffered, herself, her King and her Queen; but that effort should have been made. Alas! Bonaparte had taken pity on nothing; all hearts had cooled towards him. The moment in which he showed himself most cruel was at Jaffa[177]; the smallest, on the way to Elba: in the first case, military necessity served as his excuse; in the second, the harshness of the foreign commissaries changes the course of the reader's feelings and lessens his own abasement.

The Provisional Government of France does not itself seem to me quite without reproach: I reject the calumnies of Maubreuil[178]; nevertheless, amid the terror with which Napoleon still inspired his former servants, a fortuitous catastrophe might have presented itself in their eyes in the light only of a misfortune.

One would gladly doubt the truth of the facts reported by Count Waldburg-Truchsess, but General Koller, in a _Sequel to Waldburgs Itinerary_, has confirmed a part of his colleague's narrative; General Schouvaloff, on his part, has certified, in conversation with myself, the exactness of the facts: his measured words said more than Waldburg's expansive recital. Lastly, Fabry's[179] _Itinéraire_ is composed of authentic French documents furnished by eye-witnesses.

[Sidenote: His humiliation.]

Now that I have done justice on the commissaries and the Allies, is it really the conqueror of the world whom one sees in Waldburg's _Itinerary?_ The hero reduced to disguises and tears, weeping under a post-boy's jacket in the corner of a back-room at an inn! Was it thus that Marius bore himself on the ruins of Carthage, that Hannibal died in Bithynia, Cæsar in the Senate? How did Pompey disguise himself? By covering his head with his toga! He who had donned the purple taking shelter beneath the white cockade, uttering the cry of safety: "God save the King!"--that King, one of whose heirs he had had shot! The master of the nations encouraging the commissaries in the humiliations which they heaped upon him in order the better to hide him, delighted to have General Koller whistling before him and a coachman smoking in his face, compelling General Schouwaloff's aide-de-camp to enact the part of the Emperor, while he, Bonaparte, wore the dress of an Austrian colonel and wrapped himself in the cloak of a Russian general. He must have loved life cruelly: those immortals cannot consent to die.

Moreau said of Bonaparte:

"His chief characteristics are falsehood and the love of life: let me beat him, and I should see him at my feet begging me for mercy."

Moreau thought thus, being unable to grasp Bonaparte's nature; he fell into the same error as Lord Byron. At least, at St. Helena, Napoleon, dignified by the Muses, although petty in his quarrels with the English Governor, had to support only the weight of his own immensity. In France, the evil which he had done appeared to him personified by the widows and orphans, and constrained him to tremble before the hands of a few women.

This is too true; but Bonaparte should not be judged by the rules applied to great geniuses, because he was lacking in magnanimity. There are men who have the faculty of rising, and who have not the faculty of descending. Napoleon possessed both faculties: like the rebellious angel, he was able to contract his incommensurable stature, so as to enclose it within a measured space; his ductility furnished him with means of safety and regeneration: with him, all was not finished when he seemed to have finished. Changing his manners and costume at will, as perfect in comedy as in tragedy, this actor knew how to appear natural in the slave's tunic as in the king's mantle, in the part of Attalus or in the part of Cæsar. Another moment and you shall see, from the depth of his degradation, the dwarf raising his Briarean head; Asmodeus will come forth in a huge column of smoke from the flask into which he had compressed himself. Napoleon valued life for what it brought him; he had the instinct of that which yet remained to him to paint; he did not wish his canvas to fail him before he had completed his pictures.

[Sidenote: Scott's _Life of Napoleon._]

Writing of Napoleon's fears, Sir Walter Scott[180], less unfair than the commissaries, frankly remarks that the unkindness of the people made much impression on Bonaparte, that he even shed tears, that he showed more fear of assassination than seemed consistent with his approved courage; "but," he adds, "it must be recollected that the danger was of a new and particularly horrible description, and calculated to appall many to whom the terrors of a field of battle were familiar. The bravest soldier might shudder at a death like that of the de Witts." Napoleon was made to undergo this revolutionary anguish in the same places where he commenced his career with the Terror.

The Prussian General, once interrupting his recital, thought himself obliged to reveal a disorder which the Emperor did not conceal: Count Waldburg may have confused what he saw with the sufferings which M. de Ségur[181] witnessed in the Russian campaign, when Bonaparte, compelled to alight from his horse, leant his head against the guns. Among the number of the infirmities of illustrious warriors, true history reckons only the dagger which pierced the heart of Henry IV., or the ball which killed Turenne.

After describing Bonaparte's arrival at Fréjus, Sir Walter Scott, rid of the great scenes, joyfully falls back upon his talent; he "goes his way gossiping," as Madame de Sévigné says; he chats of Napoleon's passage to Elba, of the seduction exercised by Napoleon over the English sailors, excepting Hinton[182], who could not hear the praises given to the Emperor without muttering the word "humbug." When Napoleon left the ship, Hinton wished "His Honour" good health and better luck the next time. Napoleon typified all the littlenesses and all the greatnesses of mankind.

*

While Bonaparte, known to the universe, was escaping amid curses from France, Louis XVIII., everywhere forgotten, was leaving London under a canopy of white banners and crowns. Napoleon, on landing in the island of Elba, found back his strength there. Louis XVIII., on landing at Calais[183], might have seen Louvel[184]; he met General Maison[185], commissioned, sixteen years after, to put Charles X. on board at Cherbourg. Charles X., apparently to render him worthy of his future mission, later gave M. Maison the baton of a marshal of France, even as a knight, before fighting, conferred knighthood upon the man of lower rank with whom he deigned to measure swords.

I dreaded the effect of Louis XVIII.'s appearance. I hastened to go ahead of him to the residence whence Joan of Arc[186] fell into the hands of the English and where I was shown a volume struck by one of the cannon-balls hurled against Bonaparte. What would people think at the sight of the royal invalid replacing the horseman who might have said with Attila:

"The grass no longer grows wherever my horse has passed."

With no mission or taste for it, I undertook (I was clearly under a spell) a somewhat difficult task, that of describing the arrival at Compiègne, of causing the son of St. Louis to be seen as I idealized him by the aid of the Muses. I expressed myself thus:

"The King's coach was preceded by the generals and the marshals of France who had gone to meet his Majesty. There were no more cries of 'God save the King!' but confused clamours amid which one distinguished only accents of tender emotion and joy. The King wore a blue coat, marked only by a star and a pair of epaulettes; his legs were encased in wide gaiters of red velvet, edged with a narrow gold braid. Seated in his arm-chair, with his old-fashioned gaiters, holding his cane between his knees, he suggests Louis XIV.[187] at fifty years of age.... Marshals Macdonald[188], Ney[189], Moncey[190], Sérurier[191], Brune[192], the Prince de Neuchâtel[193], all the generals, all the persons present alike received the most affectionate words from the King. So great in France is the power of the legitimate Sovereign, the magic attached to the name of the King. A man arrives alone from exile, despoiled of everything, without a following, guards, or riches; he has nothing to give, almost nothing to promise. He alights from his carriage, leaning on the arm of a young woman; he shows himself to captains who have never seen him, to grenadiers who hardly know his name. Who is that man? Tis the King! Every one falls at his feet[194]!"

[Sidenote: Return of Louis XVIII.]

What I said above of the warriors, with the object which I was proposing to attain, was true as regards the leaders; but I lied with respect to the soldiers. I have present in my memory, as though I saw it still, the spectacle which I witnessed when Louis XVIII., entering Paris on the 3rd of May, went to visit Notre-Dame: they had wished to spare the King the sight of the foreign troops; a regiment of the old foot-guards kept the line from the Pont-Neuf to Notre-Dame, along the Quai des Orfèvres. I do not believe that human faces ever wore so threatening and so terrible an expression. Those grenadiers, covered with wounds, the conquerors of Europe, who had seen so many thousands of cannon-balls pass over their heads, who smelt of fire and powder; those same men, robbed of their captain, were forced to salute an old king, disabled by time, not war, watched as they were by an army of Russians, Austrians and Prussians, in Napoleon's invaded capital. Some, moving the skin of their foreheads, brought down their great bear-skin busbies over their eyes, as though to keep them from seeing; others lowered the corners of their mouth in angry scorn; others again showed their teeth through their mustachios, like tigers. When they presented arms, it was with a furious movement, and the sound of those arms made one tremble. Never, we must admit, have men been put to so great a test and suffered so dire a torment. If, at that moment, they had been summoned to vengeance, it would have been necessary to exterminate them to the last, or they would have swallowed the earth.

At the end of the line was a young hussar, on horse-back; he held a drawn sword, and made it leap and as it were dance with a convulsive movement of anger. His face was pale; his eyes rolled in their sockets; he opened and shut his mouth by turns, clashing his teeth together, and stifling cries of which one heard only the first sound. He caught sight of a Russian officer: the look which he darted at him cannot be described. When the King's carriage passed before him, he made his horse spring, and certainly he had the temptation to fling himself upon the King.

The Restoration committed an irreparable mistake at its outset: it ought to have disbanded the army, while retaining the marshals, generals, military governors and officers in their pensions, honours and rank; the soldiers would afterwards have successively returned into the reconstituted army, as they have since done into the Royal Guard: the Legitimate Monarchy would not then have had against it, from the first, those soldiers of the Empire, organized, divided into brigades, denominated as they had been in the days of their victories, unceasingly talking together of the time that was past, nourishing regrets and feelings hostile to their new master.

The miserable resurrection of the Maison Rouge[195], that mixture of soldiers of the old Monarchy and fighting men of the new Empire, augmented the evil: to believe that veterans distinguished on a thousand battle-fields would not be offended at seeing young men, very brave no doubt, but for the most part new to the calling of arms, wearing symbols of high military rank without having earned them, was to betray a want of knowledge of human nature.

[Sidenote: Declaration of Saint-Ouen.]

Alexander had been to visit Louis XVIII. during the stay which the latter made at Compiègne. Louis XVIII. offended him by his haughtiness: this interview led to the Declaration of Saint-Ouen of the 2nd of May. The King said in this that he had resolved to give, as the basis of the Constitution which he proposed to award to his people, the following guarantees: representative government divided into two bodies, taxes freely granted, public and individual liberty, liberty of the press, liberty of public worship, sacred inviolability of property, irrevocability of the sale of national goods, irremovable judges and an independent judicial bench, every Frenchman admissible to every employment, etc., etc.

This declaration, although it was in keeping with Louis XVIII.'s intelligence, nevertheless pertained neither to him nor to his advisers; it was simply the time which was issuing from its rest: its wings had been folded, its soaring suspended since 1792; it was now resuming its flight, or its course. The excesses of the Terror, the despotism of Bonaparte had caused ideas to turn back again; but, so soon as the obstacles that had been opposed to them were destroyed, they flowed into the bed which they were at the at same time to follow and to dig. Matters were taken up at the point at which they had been stopped; all that had passed was as though it had not happened: the human race, thrust back to the commencement of the Revolution, had only lost forty years[196] of its life; well, what is forty years in the general life of society? That gap disappears when the cut fragments of time have been joined together.

The Treaty of Paris, between the Allies and France, was concluded on the 30th of May 1814. It was agreed that, within two months, all the Powers engaged on either side in the present war should send plenipotentiaries to Vienna to settle the final arrangements in a general congress.

On the 4th of June, Louis XVIII. appeared in royal session in a collective assembly of the Legislative Body and a fraction of the Senate. He delivered a noble speech: old, by-gone, worn-out, these wearisome details now serve only as an historic thread.

To the greater part of the nation, the Charter possessed the drawback of being "granted:" this most useless word stirred up the burning question of royal or popular sovereignty. Louis XVIII. also dated his boon from the nineteenth year of his reign, considering that of Bonaparte as null and void, in the same way as Charles II[197]. had taken a clean leap over Cromwell's head: it was a kind of insult to the sovereigns, who had all recognised Napoleon and who were at that very moment in Paris. That obsolete language and those pretensions of the ancient monarchies added nothing to the lawfulness of the right and were mere puerile anachronisms[198]. That apart, the Charter, replacing despotism, bringing us legal liberty, was calculated to satisfy conscientious men. Nevertheless, the Royalists, who gained so many advantages by it, who, issuing from their village, or their paltry fireside, or the obscure posts on which they had lived under the Empire, were called to a lofty and public existence, received the boon only in a grudging spirit; the Liberals, who had accommodated themselves whole-heartedly to the tyranny of Bonaparte, thought the Charter a regular slave-code. We have returned to the time of Babel, but we no longer work at a common monument of confusion: each builds his tower to his own height, according to his strength and stature. For the rest, if the Charter appeared defective, it was because the Revolution had not run its course; the principles of equality and democracy lay at the bottom of men's minds and worked in a contrary direction to the monarchical order.

The Allied Princes lost no time in leaving Paris. Alexander, when going away, had a religious sacrifice celebrated on the Place de la Concorde[199]. An altar was erected where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood. Seven Muscovite priests performed the service, and the foreign troops defiled before the altar. The _Te Deum_ was sung to one of the beautiful airs of the old Greek music. The soldiers and the sovereigns bent their knee to the ground to receive the benediction. The thoughts of the French were carried back to 1793 and 1794, when the oxen refused to go over pavements which the smell of blood made hateful to them. What hand had led to the expiatory festival those men of all countries, those sons of the ancient barbarian invasions, those Tartars, some of whom dwelt in sheep-skin tents beneath the Great Wall of China? Those are spectacles which the feeble generations that will follow my century shall no longer see.

[Sidenote: The first Restoration.]

In the first year of the Restoration, I assisted at the third transformation of society: I had seen the old Monarchy turn into the Constitutional Monarchy, and the latter into the Republic; I had seen the Republic change into military despotism; I had seen military despotism turn back into a free Monarchy, the new ideas and the new generations return to the old principles and the old men. The marshals of the Empire become marshals of France; with the uniforms of Napoleon's Guard were mingled the uniforms of the bodyguards and the Maison Rouge, cut precisely after the old patterns; the old Duc d'Havré[200], with his powdered wig and his black cane, ambled along with shaking head, as Captain of the Body-guards, near Marshal Victor[201], limping in the Bonaparte style; the Duc de Mouchy[202], who had never seen a shot fired, went in to Mass near Marshal Oudinot[203], riddled with wounds; the Palace of the Tuileries, so proper and soldierly under Napoleon, became filled, instead of the smell of powder, with the odours of the breakfasts which ascended on every side: under messieurs the lords of the Bed-chamber, with messieurs the officers of the Mouth and the Wardrobe, everything resumed an air of domesticity. In the streets, one saw decrepit Emigrants wearing the airs and clothes of former days, most respectable men no doubt, but appearing as outlandish among the modern crowd as did the Republican captains among the soldiers of Napoleon. The ladies of the Imperial Court introduced the dowagers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and taught them "their way about" the palace. There arrived deputations from Bordeaux, adorned with armlets; parish captains from the Vendée, wearing La Rochejacquelein hats. These different persons retained the expression of the feelings, thoughts, habits, manners familiar to them. Liberty, which lay at the root of that period, made things exist together which, at first sight, appeared as though they ought not to exist; but one had difficulty in recognising that liberty, because it wore the colours of the Ancient Monarchy and of the Imperial Despotism. Everyone, too, was badly acquainted with the language of the Constitution: the Royalists made glaring errors when talking Charter; the Imperialists were still less well-informed; the Conventionals, who had become, in turn, counts, barons, senators of Napoleon and peers of Louis XVIII., lapsed at one time into the Republican dialect which they had almost forgotten, at another into the Absolutist idiom which they had learned thoroughly. Lieutenant-generals had been promoted to game-keepers. Aides-de-camp of the last military tyrant were heard to prate of the inviolable liberty of the peoples, and regicides to sustain the sacred dogma of the Legitimacy.

These metamorphoses would be hateful, if they did not in part belong to the flexibility of the French genius. The people of Athens governed itself; orators appealed to its passions in the public places; the sovereign crowd was composed of sculptors, painters, artizans, "who are wont to be spectators of speeches and hearers of deeds[204]," as Thucydides says. But when, good or bad, the decree had been delivered, who issued to execute it from amid that incoherent and inexpert mass? Socrates, Phocion, Pericles, Alcibiades.

*

Is it the Royalists who are "to blame for the Restoration," as is urged to-day? Not in the least: it was as though one should say that thirty millions of men had stood aghast, while a handful of Legitimists accomplished a detested restoration, against the wish of all, by waving a few handkerchiefs and putting a ribbon of their wives' in their hats! The vast majority of Frenchmen was, it is true, full of joy; but that majority was not a _Legitimist_ one in the limited sense of the word, applicable only to the rigid partisans of the old Monarchy. The majority was a mass composed of every shade of opinion, happy at being delivered, and violently incensed against the man whom it accused of all its misfortunes: hence the success of my pamphlet. How many avowed aristocrats were numbered among those who proclaimed the King's name? Messieurs Mathieu and Adrien de Montmorency; the Messieurs de Polignac, escaped from their jail; M. Alexis de Noailles; M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld. Did those seven or eight men, whom the people neither recognised nor followed, lay down the law to a whole nation?

Madame de Montcalm had sent me a bag containing twelve hundred francs to distribute among the pure Legitimist race: I sent it back to her, not having succeeded in placing a crown-piece. An ignominious cord was fastened round the neck of the statue which surmounted the column in the Place Vendôme; there were so few Royalists to raise a hubbub around glory and to pull at the rope that the authorities themselves, Bonapartists all, had to lower their master's image with the aid of a scaffold; the colossus was forced to bow his head: he fell at the feet of the sovereigns of Europe, who had so often lain prostrate before him. It was the men of the Republic and of the Empire who enthusiastically greeted the Restoration. The conduct and ingratitude of the persons raised by the Revolution were abominable towards him whom they affect to-day to regret and admire.

[Sidenote: Its supporters.]

Imperialists and Liberals, it is you into whose hands the power fell, you who knelt down before the sons of Henry IV. It was quite natural that the Royalists should be happy to recover their Princes and to see the end of the reign of him whom they regarded as an usurper; but you, the creatures of that usurper, surpassed the feelings of the Royalists in exaggeration. The ministers, the high dignitaries vied with each other in taking the oath to the Legitimacy; all the civil and judicial authorities crowded on each other's heels to swear hatred against the proscribed new dynasty and love to the ancient race whom they had a hundred and a hundred times condemned. Who drew up those proclamations, those adulatory addresses, so insulting to Napoleon, with which France was flooded? The Royalists? No: the ministers, the generals, the authorities chosen and maintained in office by Bonaparte. Where was the jobbing of the Restoration done? At the Royalists'? No: at M. de Talleyrand's. With whom? With M. de Pradt, almoner to "the God Mars" and mitred mountebank. Where and with whom did the Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom dine on his arrival? At the Royalists' and with Royalists? No: at the Bishop of Autun's, with M. de Caulaincourt. Where were entertainments given to "the infamous foreign princes?" At the country-houses of the Royalists? No: at Malmaison, at the Empress Joséphine's. To whom did Napoleon's dearest friends, Berthier, for instance, carry their ardent devotion? To the Legitimacy. Who spent their existences with the Emperor Alexander, with that brutal Tartar? The classes of the Institute, the scholars, the men of letters, the philosophers, philanthropists, theophilanthropists and others; they returned enchanted, laden with praises and snuff-boxes. As for us poor devils of Legitimists, we were admitted nowhere; we went for nothing. Sometimes we were told, in the streets, to go home to bed; sometimes we were recommended not to shout "God Save the King!" too loud, others having undertaken that responsibility. So far from compelling anyone to be a Legitimist, those in power declared that nobody would be obliged to change his conduct or his language, that the Bishop of Autun would be no more compelled to say Mass under the Royalty than he had been compelled to attend it under the Empire. I saw no lady of the castle-keep, no Joan of Arc proclaim the rightful sovereign with falcon on wrist or lance in hand; but Madame de Talleyrand[205], whom Bonaparte had fastened to her husband like a sign-board, drove through the streets in a calash, singing hymns on the pious Family of the Bourbons. A few sheets fluttering from the windows of the familiars of the Imperial Court made the good Cossacks believe that there were as many lilies in the hearts of the converted Bonapartists as white rags at their casements. It is wonderful how far contagion will go in France, and a man would cry, "Off with my head!" if he heard his neighbour cry the same. The Imperialists went so far as to enter our houses and make us Bourbonists put out, by way of spotless flags, such white remnants as our presses contained. This happened at my house; but Madame de Chateaubriand would have none of it, and valiantly defended her muslins.

*

[Sidenote: The Restoration ministry.]

The Legislative Body, transformed into a Chamber of Deputies, and the House of Peers, composed of 154 members, appointed for life, and including over 60 senators, formed the two first Legislative Chambers. M. de Talleyrand, installed at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, left for the Congress of Vienna, the opening of which was fixed for the 3rd of November, in execution of Clause 32 of the Treaty of the 30th of May; M. de Jaucourt held the portfolio during an interim which lasted until the Battle of Waterloo. The Abbé de Montesquiou became Minister of the Interior, having M. Guizot[206] as his secretary-general; M. Malouet[207] entered the Admiralty: he died, and was succeeded by M. Beugnot[208]; General Dupont[209] obtained the War Office; he was replaced by Marshal Soult[210], who distinguished himself through the erection of the funeral monument at Quiberon; the Duc de Blacas[211] was Minister of the Royal Household; M. Anglès[212], Prefect of Police; Councillor Dambray[213], Minister of Justice; the Abbé Louis[214], Minister of Finance.

On the 21st of October, the Abbé de Montesquiou introduced the first law on the subject of the press; it submitted every writing of less than twenty pages of print to the censorship: M. Guizot worked out this first law of liberty.

Carnot[215] addressed a letter to the King; he admitted that the Bourbons "had been joyfully received;" but, taking no account of the shortness of the time, nor of all that the Charter granted, he gave haughty lessons together with risky advice: all this is worth nothing when one has to accept the rank of minister and the title of count of the Empire; it is not becoming to show one's self proud towards a weak and liberal Prince when one has been submissive towards a violent and despotic Prince, when, a worn-out machine of the Terror, one has found one's self unequal to the calculation of the proportions of Napoleonic warfare. I sent to the press, in reply, my _Réflexions politiques_[216]; they contain the substance of the _Monarchie selon la Charte._ M. Lainé[217], the President of the Chamber of Deputies, spoke of this work to the King with praise. The King always seemed charmed with the services which I had the happiness to render him; Heaven seemed to have thrown over my shoulders the mantle of herald of the Legitimacy: but the greater the success of the work, the less did its author please His Majesty. The _Réflexions politiques_ divulged my Constitutional doctrines: the Court received an impression from them which my fidelity to the Bourbons has been unable to wipe out. Louis XVIII. used to say to his intimates:

"Beware of ever admitting a poet into your affairs: he will ruin all. Those people are good for nothing."

[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Duras.]

A powerful and lively friendship at that time filled my heart: the Duchesse de Duras[218] had imaginative powers, and even some of the facial expression of Madame de Staël: she has given a proof of her talent as an author in _Ourika._ On her return from the Emigration, she led a secluded life, for many years, in her Château d'Ussé, on the banks of the Loire, and I first heard speak of her in the beautiful gardens at Méréville, after having passed near her in London without meeting her. She came to Paris for the education of her charming daughters, Félicie[219] and Clara[220]. Relations of family, province, literary and political opinion opened the door of her company to me. Her warmth of soul, her nobility of character, her loftiness of mind, her generosity of sentiment made her a superior woman. At the commencement of the Restoration, she took me under her protection; for, in spite of all that I had done for the Legitimate Monarchy and the services which Louis XVIII. confessed that he had received from me, I had been placed so far on one side that I was thinking of retiring to Switzerland. Perhaps I should have done well: in those solitudes which Napoleon had intended for me as his ambassador to the mountains, might I not have been happier than in the Palace of the Tuileries? When I entered those halls on the return of the Legitimacy, they made upon me an impression almost as painful as on the day when I saw Bonaparte there prepared to kill the Duc d'Enghien. Madame de Duras spoke of me to M. de Blacas. He replied that I was quite free to go I where I would. Madame de Duras was so tempestuous, so courageous on behalf of her friends, that a vacant embassy was dug up, the Embassy to Sweden. Louis XVIII., already wearied of my noise, was happy to make a present of me to his good brother, King Bernadotte. Did the latter imagine that I was being sent to Stockholm to dethrone him? By the Lord, ye princes of the earth, I dethrone nobody; keep your crowns, if you can, and above all do not give them to me, for I "will none of them."

Madame de Duras, an excellent woman, who allowed me to call her my sister, and whom I had the happiness of seeing in Paris during many years, went to Nice to die[221]: one more wound re-opened. The Duchesse de Duras saw much of Madame de Staël. I cannot conceive how I did not come across Madame Récamier[222], who had returned from Italy to France; I should have greeted the succour which came in aid of my life. Already I no longer belonged to those mornings which console themselves; I was on the verge of those evening hours which stand in need of consolation.

*

On the 30th of December of the year 1814, the Legislative Chambers were prorogued to the 1st of May 1815, as though they had been convoked for the assembly of Bonaparte's _champ-de-mai._ On the 18th of January, the remains were exhumed of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. I was present at this exhumation in the cemetery[223] in which Fontaine[224] and Percier[225] have since, at the pious call of Madame la Dauphine, and in imitation of a sepulchral church at Rimini, raised what is perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris. This cloister, formed of a concatenation of tombs, strikes the imagination and fills it with sadness. I have spoken, in Book IV. of these Memoirs, of the exhumations of 1815[226]. In the midst of the bones, I recognised the Queen's head by the smile which that head had given me at Versailles.

[Sidenote: The 21st of January.]

On the 21st of January, was laid the first stone of the ground-work of the statue which was to be erected on the Place Louis XV., and which was never erected. I wrote the funeral splendour of the 21st of January; I said:

"The monks who came with the Oriflamme[227] to meet the shrine of St. Louis will not receive the descendant of the Sainted King. In the subterraneous abodes where dwelt those annihilated kings and princes, Louis XVI. will lie alone!... How is it that so many dead have risen? Why is Saint-Denis deserted? Let us rather ask why its roof has been restored, why its altar is left standing. What hand has reconstructed the vault of those caverns and prepared those empty tombs? The hand of that same man who was seated on the throne of the Bourbons[228]! O Providence, he thought that he was preparing sepulchres for his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis XVI.[229]!"

I long wished that the image of Louis XVI. might be set up on the spot where the martyr shed his blood: I should no longer be of that opinion. The Bourbons must be praised for thinking of Louis XVI. at the first moment of their return. They were bound to touch their foreheads with his ashes, before placing his crown on their heads. Now I think that they ought not to have gone further. It was not in Paris, as in London, a committee which tried the monarch: it was the whole Convention; thence the annual reproach which a repeated funeral ceremony seemed to make to the nation, apparently represented by a complete assembly. Every people has fixed anniversaries for the celebration of its triumphs, its disorders, or its misfortunes, for all have, in an equal measure, desired to keep up the memory of one and the other: we have had solemnities for the barricades, songs for St. Bartholomew's Night, feasts for the death of Capet; but is it not remarkable that the law is powerless to create days of remembrance, whereas religion has made the obscurest saint live on from age to age? If the fasts and prayers instituted for the sacrifice of Charles I. still survive[230], it is because, in England, the State unites religious to political supremacy and because, by virtue of that supremacy, the 30th of January 1649 has become a _feria._ In France things go differently: Rome alone has the right to command in religion; thenceforth, of what value is an order published by a prince, a decree promulgated by a political assembly, if another prince, another assembly have the right to expunge them? I therefore think to-day that the symbol of a feast which may be abolished, or the evidence of a tragic catastrophe not consecrated by religion, is not fitly placed on the road of the crowd carelessly and heedlessly pursuing its pleasures. At the time in which we live, it is to be feared lest a monument raised with the object of impressing horror of popular excesses might prompt the longing to imitate them: evil tempts more than good; when wishing to perpetuate the sorrow, one often perpetuates only the example. The centuries do not adopt the bequests of mourning: they have present cause enough for weeping, without undertaking to shed hereditary tears as well.

[Sidenote: Reflections at Saint-Denis.]

On beholding the catafalque leaving the Cemetière de Desclozeaux[230b], laden with the remains of the Queen and King, I felt a strong emotion; I followed it with my eyes with a fatal presentiment. At last Louis XVI. resumed his couch at Saint-Denis; Louis XVIII., on his side, slept at the Louvre. The two brothers were together commencing a new era of legitimate kings and sceptres: vain restoration of the throne and the tomb, of which time has already swept away the dual dust.

Since I have spoken of those funeral ceremonies, which were so often repeated, I will tell you of the incubus with which I used to be oppressed when, after the ceremony, I walked in the evening in the half-undraped basilica: that I dreamt of the vanity of human greatness among those devasted tombs follows as the vulgar moral issuing from the spectacle itself; but the workings of my mind did not stop at that: I penetrated into the very nature of man. Is all emptiness and absence in the region of the sepulchres? Is there nothing in that nothingness? Are there no existences of nihility, no thoughts of dust? Have those bones no modes of life with which we are unacquainted? Who knows of the passions, the pleasures, the embraces of those dead? Are the things which they have dreamt, thought, expected like themselves idealities, engulfed pell-mell with themselves? Dreams, futures, joys, sorrows, liberties and slaveries, powers and weaknesses, crimes and virtues, honours and infamies, riches and miseries, talents, geniuses, intelligences, glories, illusions, loves: are you but perceptions of a moment, perceptions that pass with the destruction of the skulls in which they take birth, with the extinction of the bosom in which once beat a heart? In your eternal silence, O tombs, if tombs you be, is nought heard but a mocking and eternal laughter? Is that laughter the God, the sole derisive reality, which will survive the imposture of this universe? Let us close our eyes; let us fill up life's despairing abyss with those great and mysterious words of the martyr:

"I am a Christian!"

[128] Odo King of France (_d._ 898), the first king of the Capet Dynasty.--T.

[129] Abbon (_d._ 923), nicknamed the Crooked, author of a Latin poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans.

[130] Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia Queen of Prussia (1776-1810), the beautiful wife of Frederic William III., and daughter of the Duke of Mecklemburg-Strelitz. Napoleon was said to be enamoured of Louisa of Prussia.--T.

[131] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. VIII.--T.

[132] _Ps._ XXI. 16. In the Vulgate: _Et lingua mea adhasit faucibus meis._--B.

[133] The Emperor Alexander had expressed a wish to say, not at the Tuileries, but at the Élysée; he remained there only a few hours, and accepted the offer of the Prince of Talleyrand, who hastened to place at his disposal his house in the Rue Saint-Florentin.--B.

[134] Pope Pius VII.--T.

[135] Fabian Wilhelm Prince von der Osten-Sacken (1752-1837) had fought in all the campaigns against Turkey, Poland and France, and been taken prisoner by Masséna at Zurich. Alexander appointed him Governor of Paris in 1814.--T.

[136] Paul Count Schouvaloff (_circa_ 1775-1823), a distinguished Russian general, the same who later escorted Napoleon to Fréjus.--T.

[137] Madame Charles Bonaparte (1750-1836), _née_ Ramolino, Napoleon's mother. When Bonaparte assumed the title of Emperor, he bestowed upon his mother that of Madame Mère and Imperial Highness.--T.

[138] Cardinal Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was Madame Mère's half-brother.--T.

[139] Nikolaus Field-Marshal Prince Esterhazy von Galantha (1765-1833), the Hungarian magnate who, in 1797, had organized an army in Hungary to repel the French invasion.--T.

[140] Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (1784-1860), Napoleon's youngest and most worthless brother, distinguished for little save his personal courage. From Jerome the present Bonapartist pretenders are descended. He had married a daughter of the King of Wurtemberg, who, after Waterloo, gave him the title of Comte de Montfort. He returned to France in 1848, and prepared the way for the election to the Presidency of his nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, afterwards Napoleon III. Jerome, who resumed his royal title under the Second Empire, was successively appointed Governor of the Invalides (1848), a marshal of France (1850), and President of the Senate (1851).--T.

[141] _Cf._ my description of the Hundred Days at Ghent, _infra,_ and the portrait of M. de Talleyrand given at the end of these Memoirs.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1839).

[142] The full title of Chateaubriand's work was _De Bonaparte, des Bourbons et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes pour le bonheur de la France et celui de l'Europe._ Extracts from the famous pamphlet were published in the _Journal des Débats_ on the 4th of April 1814, and the work itself was placed on sale the next day, Wednesday the 5th of April.--B.

[143] Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839), was the editor of the bulletins of the National Assembly in 1789, and thus laid the foundations of the _Moniteur universel._ In 1792, he was sent as Ambassador to Naples, was captured by the Austrians on the road, and was kept in confinement until 1795, when he was exchanged for the daughter of Louis XVI. Bonaparte appointed Maret Secretary-General to the Consuls and later, in 1804, made him Secretary of State. In this capacity Maret accompanied Napoleon on all his campaigns, drawing up most of the instructions and bulletins. He was in 1811 created Duc de Bassano, and was appointed Foreign Minister and Minister of War in 1813. He was exiled in 1815, not returning to France until 1820. The Duc de Bassano was a minister of Louis-Philippe for the space of one week only (10 to 18 November 1834). To Napoleon he had been an invaluable and indefatigable servant.--T.

[144] François Séverin Desgraviers-Marceau (1769-1796) enlisted at the age of sixteen, became a captain in the Vendée in 1793 and, in the same year, when only twenty-four years old, was, upon Kléber's recommendation, appointed General-in-Chief of the Western Army. On the 12th of December, he won the bloody battle of Mans over the Vendeans. In 1794, he was employed as a general of division in the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and contributed to the victory of Fleurus. In 1796, he protected the retreat of Jourdan's Army, and had several times repelled the enemy when he fell mortally wounded near Altkirchen, at the age of twenty-seven years. Marceau was noted for his humanity and disinterestedness, as much as for his courage and strategic talent His native city of Chartres erected a monument to him in 1850.--T.

[145] Lazare Hoche (1768-1797) received the command of the Army of the Moselle at the age of twenty-five. In 1793-94, he cleared the Austrians out of Alsace. He was thrown into prison for a short time, at the instance of Pichegru, over whose head he had been promoted, but recovered his liberty on the 9 Thermidor, and was placed at the head of the Army of the Vendée. He defeated the Emigrants at Quiberon and succeeded in pacifying the whole district. In 1796, he commanded the army which was intended to effect a landing in Ireland, but was driven back by storms. He was next, in February 1797, placed in command of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, consisting of 80,000 men, and defeated the Austrians in three engagements, but died, in September, of a complaint of the bowels. Hoche has a statue at Versailles, where he was born.--T.

[146] Barthélemy Cathérine Joubert (1769-1799) served with great distinction in Italy, as second to Bonaparte, in 1795 and 1796; in 1798, he himself commanded the Army of Italy and at first obtained great successes. On the 15th of August 1799, however, he was unexpectedly attacked by the Russians at Novi, saw his army routed, and was mortally wounded while attempting to effect a rally. The Directory were considering whether they should place Joubert in the supreme power, when his death occurred.--T.

[147] Masséna routed the Russians at Zurich on the 26th of August 1799.--T.

[148] Camille Jordan (1771-1821), a moderate French citizen of liberal opinions, and author of some wise and temperate works.--T.

[149] Louis Jean Népomucène Lemercier (1771-1840), a notable playwright and a member of the French Academy.--T.

[150] Jean Denis Comte Lanjuinais (1753-1827), a moderate member of the Convention, of which, after escaping from arrest, he was made President in 1795. In 1800, he was made a senator, and, although he voted against the life consulship, he was later created a count of the Empire. In 1814, he voted for the deposition of Napoleon and was made a peer by Louis XVIII.--T.

[151] Charles François Lebrun, Duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), the third of the three Consuls. Under the Empire, Bonaparte created him Duc de Plaisance, High Treasurer, and Administrator-General of Holland. He gave in his adhesion to the recall of the Bourbons in 1814, and was created a peer under the Restoration.--T.

[152] Here I omit quotations from Marie Joseph de Chénier, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Béranger, Courier, Victor Hugo, Sheridan and Lord Byron.--T.

[153] M. de Talleyrand occupied the house which forms the corner of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue Saint-Florentin. After the death of the Prince de Talleyrand, it was taken by the Princesse de Lieven. It is now the property of M. Alphonse de Rothschild.--B.

[154] The Abbé Dominique Dufour de Pradt (1759-1837), was Grand Vicar at Rouen on the outbreak of the Revolution. He emigrated in 1791, returned in 1801, and became successively almoner to the Emperor, a baron, Bishop of Poitiers and Archbishop of Mechlin. In 1812, he was sent as Ambassador to Warsaw, but acquitted himself very badly in this capacity, and was deprived of his almoner-ship and sent back to his diocese. He thereupon became a violent enemy of Napoleon, and was one of the first to declare against him when the Allies entered Paris. Nevertheless, he was coldly received by the Bourbons and obliged to resign his archbishopric, receiving a pension of 12,000 francs by way of indemnity. He wrote a mass of occasional matter, including a History of his Polish Embassy. The publication referred to above is his _Récit historique sur la restauration de la royauté en France le 31 mars_ 1814.--T.

[155] Pierre de Ruel, Maréchal Marquis de Beurnonville (1752-1821), had served in the Republican armies, was made Minister of War in 1792, but was captured by Dumouriez and delivered to the Austrians: he was one of the French officers exchanged in 1795 for Louis XVI.'s daughter, who became Duchesse d'Angoulême. Under the Consulate and Empire, he was sent as Ambassador to Berlin and Madrid. He became a senator in 1805, a count of the Empire in 1808. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France in 1814, a marshal of France in 1816, gave him his marquisate in 1817 and the Order of the Holy Ghost in 1820.--T.

[156] Arnail François Marquis de Jaucourt (1757-1852) was a colonel in the royal service at the age of twenty-five. Under the Revolution, he pronounced for the Constitutional Monarchy and was obliged to emigrate. Napoleon made him a senator in 1803, First Chamberlain to King Joseph in 1804, a count in 1808; and Jaucourt remained faithful until the flight of Joseph and Marie-Louise, when he consented to join the Provisional Government. Louis XVIII. made him a minister of State and a peer of France; but he held office for only short periods, devoting himself mainly to the interests of Protestantism, a form of worship to which he belonged.--T.

[157] Emmerich Joseph Wolfgang Heribert Duc de Dalberg (1773-1833) left the service of the Grand-duke of Baden for that of Napoleon and was naturalized a Frenchman. He was created a duke of the Empire in 1810 and, for the rest, clung to the fortunes of Talleyrand.--T.

[158] François Xavier Marc Antoine Abbé Duc de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1757-1832) had followed the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) to England after the Revolution. He returned to France after the 9 Thermidor to serve the interests of the Bourbons, but was exiled by Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. made him his Minister of the Interior (1814-1815), and he was for some time at the head of affairs. After the Second Restoration, he was created a peer of France (1815), a count (1817) and a duke (1821) but took no further part in politics. In 1816, he was admitted to the French Academy, although he had no literary qualifications. He died in retirement and poor.--T.

[159] Dupont de Nemours (_vide_ note, _supra_, p. 56) was Secretary to the Provisional Government, rather than a member of it.--B.

[160] The Treaty of Tilsit, between Russia and Prussia on the one hand and France on the other, took place in 1807.--T.

[161] At the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin belonged to the Duc de Fitz-James, who sold it, in 1787, to the Duchesse de l'Infantado. Hence the name of Hôtel de l'Infantado by which it was generally designated under the Empire and in the early years of the Restoration.--B.

[162] Adresse du Gouvernement provisoire aux armées françaises (2 April 1814).--B.

[163] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1544-1611), brother to the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, on whose death he proclaimed himself the Head of the League and Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and made war upon Henry III. and the King of Navarre (Henry IV.), but was defeated by the latter at Arques and Ivry. He kept up his resistance after the death of Henry III., and proclaimed a phantom king in the person of the Cardinal de Bourbon. On the death of that Prince, in 1590, he convoked the States-General in the hope of securing his own election, but failed, ended by submitting and, in 1596, made his peace with Henry IV., who made him Governor of the Isle of France.--T.

[164] Charles Comte, later Duc de Cossé-Brissac was appointed Governor of Paris by the Duc de Mayenne in 1594. A few months later, he surrendered the capital to Henry IV., who made him a marshal.--T.

[165] Jean Baptiste Mailhe (1754-1834), member of the Convention for the Haute-Garonne. As the result of the drawing which took place among the departments, he was the first called upon to vote in the trial of the King. In 1814, he sent an address to the Senate to congratulate it on pronouncing the deposition of Napoleon.--B.

[166] Baron Petit (1772-1856) had been Brigadier-General of the Imperial Guard since the 23rd of June 1813. The day after the leave-taking at Fontainebleau, he swore allegiance to Louis XVIII., who made him a knight of St. Louis; but he fought at Cambronne's side at Waterloo, and protected the flight of the Emperor. Louis-Philippe created him a peer of France in 1837, and made him Commander of the Invalides. Napoleon III. appointed him a Senator in 1852.--T.

[167] Franz Baron von Koller (1767-1826), Adjutant-General to Prince von Schwarzenberg, and an Austrian general of the first merit.--T.

[168] Colonel, later General Sir Neil Campbell (1776-1827). Colonel Campbell stayed in Elba at Napoleon's request, and it was during one of his absences in Italy that Napoleon escaped, Campbell's supposed residence having put the English naval captains off their guard.--T.

[169] Friedrich Ludwig Count Truchsess von Waldburg (1776-1844), author of the _Reise von Fontainebleau nach Fréjus_ (1815), from which the following extracts are taken.--T.

[170] Johann Philipp Palm (1766-1806), the victim of this judicial murder. A book was published at Nuremberg, in 1814, by the unfortunate publisher's family, giving a full and touching account of his trial and execution.--T.

[171] Friedrich von Gentz (1764-1832), a noted German publicist, author of the Prussian manifesto against France in 1806, the Austrian manifestoes of 1809 and 1813, the protocols of the Conferences of Vienna (1814) and Paris (1815), and of several remarkable political works.--T.

[172] Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), did not receive his duchy until the 11th of May 1814. The earlier steps are: Baron Douro and Viscount Wellington (4 September 1809), Earl of Wellington (28 February 1812), and Marquess of Wellington (3 October 1812).--T.

[173] Paul François Charles Augereau, Maréchal Duc de Castiglione (1757-1816), a brilliant, dashing and courageous soldier. He was one of the first to recognise the Bourbons.--T.

[174] Henri Gratien Comte Bertrand (1773-1844), Napoleon's intimate and confidant, accompanied him to Elba and St. Helena, and never left his side until his death. He had been sentenced to death by contumacy in 1816. On his return from St. Helena, in 1821, Louis XVIII. remitted his penalty and restored him to his rank. In 1840, he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena and, with him, brought back the remains of Napoleon to France. He is buried at the Invalides by the Emperor's side.--T.

[175] Comte Drouot (1774-1847), the great artillery general. Napoleon made him Governor of Elba. He returned to France with the Emperor at Waterloo, and fought with extraordinary gallantry. He was proscribed by Louis XVIII. and tried by court-martial, but acquitted. He ended his days in retirement, and lost his sight some years before his death. Napoleon left him 100,000 francs in his will.--T.

[176] TRUCHSESS-WALDBURG, _A Narrative of Napoleon Buonaparte's Journey from Fontainebleau to Fréjus in April 1814_ (London: John Murray, 1816).--T.

[177] In 1799, after the capture of Jaffa, Bonaparte had the garrison murdered in cold blood, as well as some thousands of prisoners of whom he had a difficulty in disposing.--T

[178] According to several historians, the Marquis de Maubreuil was a needy adventurer, as destitute of scruples as of money, who is supposed to have been charged by Talleyrand, in April 1814, to assassinate Napoleon. Dupont, the Minister for War, Anglès, the Minister for Police, and Bourrienne, the Postmaster-General, the commanders of the Russian and Austrian troops, the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria himself are said to have approved of the mission entrusted to Maubreuil. All this is an abominable calumny.

The royalist zeal of which Maubreuil had given signs, after the entry of the Allies into Paris, had earned for him the good graces of M. Laborie, the assistant-secretary to the Provisional Government; but his protector, failing to procure him a post, he invented a stroke of the boldest character.

Under the pretext that he was going in search of a portion of the Crown diamonds, which had been removed from Paris and were not to be found, on the 21st of April, at the village of Fossard, near Montereau, he waylaid the Queen of Westphalia, who was returning to Germany, and seized eleven cases containing the Queen's jewelry and diamonds and 80,000 francs in gold. When the news of this great stroke reached Paris, the Sovereigns, and the Emperor Alexander in particular, displayed the liveliest annoyance and demanded the punishment of the culprits. Maubreuil, meantime, had returned to Paris, on the night of the 23rd of April; he carried to the Tuileries the cases which he had taken, one of them, according to him, having been broken and its contents scattered on the road. At the same time, he handed over four sacks, containing gold, he said. The next day, when the cases were opened by the locksmith who had made the keys, they were found to be almost empty; the sacks contained silver pieces of twenty sous, instead of gold pieces of twenty francs. The police, before long, had proofs that the broken case, which was just that which had contained the most precious objects, had been opened at Versailles, in a room at an inn, by Maubreuil and his accomplice, a certain Dasies. Moreover, in one of the apartments occupied by Maubreuil in Paris--he had three or four--they found on the bed a magnificent diamond which had belonged to the Queen of Westphalia. The evidences of the theft were incontestable. Maubreuil put a bold face upon it. He declared that he had left Paris with the mission to assassinate the Emperor; that this mission had been given him by M. de Talleyrand; that, in spite of the horror with which it inspired him, he had accepted it for fear lest it should be given to another. "He had," he continued, "arranged everything to deceive the criminal intentions of those who had employed him, and he had sought, by bringing them a treasure and contenting their greed, to appease their dissatisfaction." This could not stand proof; but, in the then circumstances, those lies might have produced the most deplorable and baleful effects among the public, particularly the soldiers. The Government thought it the wisest course to hurry nothing, to keep the accused in prison, and to await aid and counsel from time and the progress of events. _Cf._ the _Souvenirs du comte de Semallé_ and Vol. II. of the _Mémoires du chancelier Pasquier._--B.

[179] Jean Baptiste Germain Fabry (1780-1821), author of the _Itinéraire de Buonaparte de Doulevent à Fréjus_ (1821) and of numerous publications, written with talent and animated with a profoundly religious and royalist spirit.--B.

[180] Sir Walter Scott, Bart (1771-1832). The above extract is taken from his _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (1827), chap, lxxxi.--T.

[181] Philippe Paul Comte de Ségur (1786-1873), author of the _Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée en 1812_ (1824), from which the above incident is quoted.--T.

[182] Hinton was boatswain on board the _Undaunted_, which conveyed Napoleon to Elba.--T.

[183] Louis XVIII. landed at Calais on the 24th of April 1814. He had left France on the 22nd of June 1791.--B.

[184] Louis Pierre Louvel (1753-1820), the assassin of the Duc de Berry (13 February 1820). He declared in one of his interrogatories that, on the first day of the Restoration, he had sworn to exterminate all the Bourbons and that, in April 1814, he had gone on foot from Metz to Calais with the object of stabbing Louis XVIII.--T.

[185] Nicolas Joseph Maréchal Comte Maison (1771-1840) rallied to the new Government and was made Governor of Paris and a peer of France (1814). He refused to accept any post from Napoleon on the return of the latter from Elba, and in 1817 was created a marquis. He commanded the Morean Expedition in 1828, and was made a marshal of France in the following year. Maison was one of the commissaries appointed to accompany Charles X. to Cherbourg in 1830. Under Louis-Philippe he was Ambassador to Vienna (1831-1833), to St. Petersburg (1833-1835), and Minister of War (1835-1836).--T.

[186] Joan of Arc (1410-1430) was captured by the English on the 24th of May 1430, on attempting a sortie from Compiègne, besieged by the English and Burgundians. Louis XVIII. arrived at Compiègne on the 29th of April 1814.--T.

[187] Louis XIV. (1638-1715) was the direct ancestor of Louis XVIII. in the fifth generation (great-great-great-grandfather).--T.

[188] Étienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, Maréchal Duc de Tarente (1765-1840), a fine soldier, of Irish descent. He was made a peer of France, after Napoleon's abdication, and Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, a dignity which he retained until 1831.--T.

[189] Michel Ney, Maréchal Duc d'Elchingen, Prince de la Moskowa (1769-1815), was, at the end of the next year, sentenced to be shot for his treachery to the King, the sentence being executed on the 7th of December 1815.--T.

[190] Bon Adrien Jeannot Moncey, Maréchal Duc de Conégliano (1754-1842), was imprisoned for three months in 1815 at Ham for refusing to try Marshal Ney, and excluded from the House of Peers, to which he was not readmitted until 1819. In 1823 he was given a command in Spain in the war of French intervention. He ended his life as Governor of the Invalides, where he received the remains of Napoleon.--T.

[191] Jean Marie Philippe Maréchal Comte Sérurier (1742-1819) was Governor of the Invalides, in 1814, and burnt the flags captured from the enemy in the court-yard to save them from being restored to the Allies. Louis made him a peer of France and Grand Cross of St. Louis, but he resigned all his functions in December 1815.--T.

[192] Marshal Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (1763-1815) rejoined Napoleon on his return from Elba, and was killed by the Royalist mob at Avignon shortly after the Battle of Waterloo.--T.

[193] Alexandre Berthier, Maréchal Prince de Wagram, Prince de Neuchâtel (1753-1815), committed suicide on the return of Napoleon, from the balcony of his mother-in-law, the Duke of Birkenfeld's palace at Bamberg, during a fit of fever (1 June 1815).--T.

[194] _Cf. Compiègne, avril_ 1814 (Paris: Le Normant, 1814).--B.

[195] The musketeers of the King's Military Household, so called because of their red uniform.--B.

[196] The manuscript of the Memoirs says forty years. Is this simply a _lapsus calami_, or did Chateaubriand, who, it is true, was an indifferent calculator, really reckon forty years between 1792 and 1814?--B.

[197] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) dated his reign from 1649, the year of the execution of Charles I., and not from 1660, the year of his restoration.--T.

[198] In spite of what Chateaubriand says, it is only just to recognise that Louis XVIII. had given proof of a truly royal dignity in not consenting to accept the crown at the hands of the senators, and in proclaiming that he held it in his own right. The Comte de Lille, the exile of Hartwell, had, in fact, no other title to occupy the throne than as the descendant of Louis XIV., the brother of Louis XVI., and the successor of Louis XVII.--B.

[199] Chateaubriand here commits a slight error of date. The Emperor Alexander left Paris on the 2nd of June 1814. It was not then, nor on the eve of his departure, that he had a religious service celebrated on the Place Louis XV. This ceremony had taken place almost immediately after the entry of the Allies, before either the Comte d'Artois or Louis XVIII. had arrived in Paris, on Sunday the 10th of April. On that day, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia and Prince von Schwarzenberg, representing the Emperor of Austria, reviewed their respective troops, drawn up in line, to the number of 80,000 men, from the Boulevard de l'Arsenal to the Boulevard de la Madeleine. At one o'clock, a mass was said on the Place Louis XV. by a bishop and six priests of the Greek rite. A _Te Deum_ was sung to thank God for giving peace to France and the world. The Allied troops defiled before the altar, which was surrounded by the National Guard of Paris, under the orders of its commandant, General Dessolle.--B.

[200] Joseph Anne Auguste Maximilien de Croy, Duc d'Havré (1744-1839). He was a brigadier-general, in 1789, when elected a deputy to the States-General by the nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham. In 1814, Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, a lieutenant-general and a captain of the Body-guards. He was then seventy years of age.--B.

[201] Victor Perrin, Maréchal Duc de Bellune (1766-1841), known as Marshal Victor, had been seriously wounded in the campaign of 1814. He remained faithful to Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days, and was created a peer of France in 1815. He was Minister for War for a few days under the Bourbons.--T.

[202] Philippe Louis Marie Antoine de Noailles, Prince de Poix, Duc de Mouchy (1752-1819). His career resembled that of the Duc d'Havré in every particular. He was sent to the States-General in 1789 by the nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham, and was created a peer, a lieutenant-general and a captain of the Body-guards in 1814.--B.

[203] Nicolas Charles Oudinot, Maréchal Duc de Reggio (1767-1847), one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals, was wounded no less than thirty-two times. Under the Restoration, to which he continued faithful in 1815, he became a peer of France, Major-General of the Royal Guard and Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Paris. Louis-Philippe appointed Oudinot Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour (1839) and Governor of the Invalides (1842).--T.

[204] THUC. III. 38.--T.

[205] Madame de Talleyrand-Périgord, _née_ Worley, was born at Pondichéry, where her father was harbour-master. At sixteen years of age, she married a Swiss, Mr. Grant, who lived with her successively at Chandernagor and Calcutta; she allowed herself to be eloped with and carried to Europe. After numerous adventures, she became Talleyrand's mistress under the Directory and lived with him publicly. The First Consul ordered his minister to marry her, which was done, after Talleyrand had received a brief from the Court of Rome releasing him from his vows, and after Mr. Grant, then in Paris, had agreed to a divorce, in consideration of a large sum of money and a good place... at the Cape of Good Hope. The marriage of the ex-Bishop of Autun was, for that matter, a purely civil one. When the Restoration came, he settled a pension of 60,000 francs on his wife, on condition that she went to live in England.--B.

[206] François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) became Minister of the Interior in 1830, under Louis-Philippe, was French Ambassador to England for a few months in 1840, and Prime Minister from 1840 to 1848.--T.

[207] Pierre Victor Baron Malouet (1740-1814) served in the Admiralty all his life: under Louis XVI.; as Commissary-general of Marine under Bonaparte; and as Minister of Marine under the Restoration.--T.

[208] Jacques Claude Comte Beugnot (1761-1835) had, under the Empire, been Prefect of Rouen, a councillor of State, Minister of Finance to King Jerome, and Prefect of Lille. Louis XVIII. made him Minister of Marine in December 1814. He accompanied the King to Ghent and, on the return, became Postmaster-general. He was made a peer of France in 1730.--B.

[209] Pierre Antoine Comte Dupont de L'Étang (1765-1840), had been one of the most brilliant generals of the Empire, but was cashiered for his capitulation at Baylen (1808), and kept in prison until 1814. He remained only a few months at the War Office. In 1836, Dupont published a translation in verse of the Odes of Horace and, in 1839, the _Art de la guerre_, a poem in ten cantos.--T.

[210] Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Maréchal Duc de Dalmatie (1769-1852), Napoleon's greatest tactician. He became Major-general of Napoleon's army during the Hundred Days, and was exiled by the Bourbons at the Second Restoration; returned to France in 1819, and was raised to the peerage, in 1827, by Charles X. But, in 1830, he devoted himself to Louis-Philippe; became Minister of War and President of the Council; reorganized the French Army in 1832; represented France at the coronation of Victoria in 1838, and received a veritable ovation in England. In 1839 and again in 1840, Soult resumed the office of Minister of War, together with the Presidency of the Council; but was obliged by the state of his health to resign, in 1847, and received the quite exceptional title of Marshal-General, which only Turenne, Villars and Saxe had borne before him.--T.

[211] Pierre Louis Casimir Duc de Blacas d'Aulps (1770-1839) accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, was created a peer under the Second Restoration, and Ambassador to Naples and later to Rome. In 1823, he was reappointed to Naples, where he remained till 1830, when he followed the Bourbons into exile, dying at Prague in 1839.--T.

[212] Jules Jean Baptiste Comte Anglès (1778-1828). He again became Prefect of Police in 1818, and retained that post until 1821.--B.

[213] Charles Dambray (1760-1829) was made Chancellor, Minister of Justice and President of the Chamber in 1814. He took refuge in England during the Hundred Days, and resumed the presidency of the Chamber on his return.--T.

[214] Joseph Dominique Baron Louis (1755-1837) had taken orders and assisted as deacon to the Bishop of Autun at the Feast of the Federation in 1790. He emigrated, nevertheless, and employed his exile in studying the financial system of England. He was several times Minister of Finance: in 1814, 1816, 1818 and 1831.--T.

[215] Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823), the famous "Organizer of Victory." He became Minister of the Interior during the Hundred Days, and was exiled during the Second Restoration, retiring first to Warsaw and next to Magdeburg, where he died. He was the author of several works, including the _Mémoire adressé au roi en juillet 1814_, the letter in question.--T.

[216] _Réflexions politiques sur quelques écrits du jour et sur les intérêts de tous les Français_ (December 1814). This is one of Chateaubriand's finest writings.--B.

[217] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein, Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835), became Minister of the Interior in 1816, a member of the French Academy in the same year, and a viscount and peer of France in 1823.--T.

[218] Claire Duchesse de Duras (1777-1829), _née_ de Coëtnempren de Kersaint, married in 1797, in England, Amédée Bretagne Malo de Durfort, who, three years later, on the death of his father, became Duc de Duras. On the return of the Bourbons, the Duc de Duras was made a peer of France and First Lord of the Bed-chamber. The duchess at that time had one of the most popular salons in Paris. She wrote several little novels: _Édouard, Ourika, Frère Ange, Olivier_, and the _Mémoires de Sophie_, of which the two first were published in 1820 and 1824 respectively; the other three are still in manuscript. Towards the end of her life, the Duchesse de Duras wrote some eminently Christian pages, which were published, ten years after her death, in 1839, under the title of _Réflexions et prières inédites._--B.

[219] Claire Louise Augustine Félicité Magloire de Durfort (_b._ 1798), known as Félicie, married, first (1813), Charles Léopold Henri de La Trémoille, Prince de Talmont (_d._ 1815), and, secondly (1819), Brigadier-general Auguste du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejacquelein.--B.

[220] Claire Henriette Philippine Benjamine de Durfort (1799-1863), known as Clara, married (1819) Henri Louis Comte de Chastellux, created Duc de Rauzan on the occasion of his marriage.--B.

[221] In January 1829.--B.

[222] Madame Julie Récamier (1777-1849), _née_ Bernard, of whom much will be read in the sequel, was very intimate with Madame de Staël, and had been banished from Paris by Napoleon for the frequency of her visits to Madame de Staël at Coppet.--T.

[223] The old Cemetière de la Madeleine, at No. 48, Rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré.--B.

[224] Pierre François Fontaine (1762-1865), an eminent modern French architect and member of the Academy of Arts, who, together with Percier, _quem vide infra_, constructed the Expiatory Chapel at the corner of the Rue d'Anjou and the Boulevard Haussmann, mentioned below, and a number of other public works, including the great staircase at the Louvre, the restorations at Versailles, etc.--T

[225] Charles Percier (1764-1840), member of the Institute, and Fontaine's friend and collaborator.--T.

[226] _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 157.--T.

[227] The Oriflamme, which, under the Capets, became the standard of France, was originally the private banner of the Abbey of Saint-Denis.--T.

[228] The tombs of the Kings at Saint-Denis were opened in 1793, by order of the Convention (6 August), and restored, together with the church, by Napoleon, in 1806.--T.

[229] Chateaubriand: _Le Vingt-et-un janvier_ (Paris: Le Normant, 1815).--B.

[230] The service in memory of the martyrdom of King Charles I. was struck out of the Prayer-book in the year 1859.--T.

[230b] M. Descloseaux (not Ducluzeau, as the previous editions of the Memoirs have it) was a faithful Royalist, who had become the proprietor of the old Cemetière de la Madeleine to save the remains of the King and Queen from profanation.--B.