an amazing facility for keeping on the best possible terms with all
the parties among whom he was cast. The secret of his influence with
Bonaparte appears to have been, a sentiment of profound gratitude
in the latter for the high praise bestowed by Clarke in his "Secret
Report" to the Directory on the conduct of the young general in Italy.
This document afterwards fell into the hands of the First Consul, who
never forgot its contents.
Clarke, tired of his residence in Florence, wrote letter after letter,
demanding his recal to Paris, terming his embassy a species of exile;
and Bonaparte, believing that his punishment was sufficiently severe,
at last gave him leave to return; but desired him to travel by the way
of Lisle (a fortified city in the departement of the north), to the
camp at Boulogne. In Belgium he gave him the title of Councillor of
State, and created for him two places in the cabinet--one as secretary
for the marine, and the other for the war.
Arrived at the camp of Boulogne, one of the earliest matters entrusted
to the general was the proposed establishment of Irish brigades, to
co-operate in the projected invasion of Britain; and these corps Clarke
believed might be recruited among the Irishmen who were prisoners of
war in France. While this project was on the _tapis_, he had many
interviews with the famous Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had been appointed
by the Directory chef-de-brigade, and afterwards adjutant-general;
and with Lazarus Hoche, a frank, resolute, and zealous republican,
who, from being a stable-boy and private of the French guards, raised
himself to one of the highest positions in the army of France. In 1792,
he was a corporal; in 1793, he was a _general_, commanding the army of
the Moselle; and in the two subsequent years he subdued La Vendée.
Tone was introduced to Hoche by Clarke, and in his _Memoirs_ he details
the questions they asked him concerning the state of Ireland; where
a landing might be effected; where provisions might be relied on,
particularly bread; whether French auxiliaries might count on being
able to form an Irish Provisional Government, either of the Catholic
Committee, or of the chiefs of the Irish patriots? On these subjects
Tone had many a long and anxious conference with his countryman Clarke,
and with Hoche.
After a long interview with Hoche, in the cabinet of Fleury one day,
Wolfe Tone was asked, what form of government the Irish would adopt, in
the event of their successfully encountering the British troops?
"I was going to answer him with great earnestness," says Tone, in his
interesting _Memoirs_, "when General Clarke entered, to request that
we would come to dinner with Citizen Carnot. We accordingly adjourned
the conversation to the apartment of the President, where we found
Carnot, and one or two more. Hoche, after some time, took me aside, and
repeated his question. I replied, '_Most decidedly a republic._' He
asked again, 'Are you sure?' I said, 'As sure as I can be of anything.
I know nobody in Ireland who thinks of any other system----.' Carnot
joined us here, with a pocket-map of Ireland, and the conversation
between Clarke, Hoche, and him became pretty general, every one else
having left the room. I said scarcely anything, as I wished to listen.
Hoche related to Carnot the substance of what passed between him and
me. When he mentioned his anxiety as to bread, Carnot laughed and said,
'There is plenty of beef in Ireland--if you cannot get bread, you
must eat beef.' I told him I hoped they would find both; adding, that
within twenty years Ireland had become a great corn country, so that at
present it made a considerable article in her exports."--Vol. ii. pp.
14-18.
The patience of Wolfe Tone was sorely tried by many and unnecessary
delays; and, after all, the hopes of the Irish exiles ended only in
mustering a regiment of their countrymen, which, instead of embarking
for Ireland, marched to the invasion of Spain, under the unfortunate
Colonel Lewis Lacy, the son of a race of hereditary Irish soldiers, as
related elsewhere.
In the year following his double appointment as minister for the war
and marine, Clarke made the German campaign on the staff of Bonaparte,
and was present at the capture of the free city of Ulm, in the Swabian
circle, on the 17th October, 1805, and at other operations, which
drove the army of the Archduke Ferdinand across the Danube; and, on
the capture of Vienna by the corps of the brave Murat and Lannes, he
was named governor of the city and also of Upper and Lower Austria,
Carinthia, Styria, Friuli, Trieste, &c. His moderation and justice in
this high command elevated him among the victors, and won him the love
and esteem of the vanquished. He also received the cordon of Grand
Officer of the Legion of Honour, and soon after was ordered to define
the line of demarcation between Brisgau, in the kingdom of Wirtemberg,
and the Grand Duchy of Baden.
Two months were spent by him in conferences and diplomacy. From
the 9th to the 20th of July, 1806, he was engaged with the Russian
plenipotentiary, and their interviews were terminated by the wonderful
treaty which opened and ceded to France, Cattaro, a Venetian
territory in Dalmatia, with its capital, harbour, and citadel; and
which maintained Gustavus IV. in possession of the ancient Duchy of
Pomerania, and left to be achieved, at an early period, the junction
of Sicily to the kingdom of Murat--the whole being arranged by them,
without condescending to ask the advice of Great Britain, which was
then the faithful ally of Prussia. This treaty was never ratified by
the Emperor Alexander. The other conferences took place between Clarke
and Lord Yarmouth, to whom Charles Fox added the Scottish Earl of
Lauderdale; while, to assist Clarke, the French government added Jean
Baptiste Champagny, the Duc de Cadore, who was only a spectator of the
negotiations, which were without result, and are of no consequence to
the reader; but Clarke, who had displayed his usual acuteness, tact,
and skill in all his meetings with the Lords Yarmouth and Lauderdale,
was not a little proud of having prevailed upon M. D'Oubril to sign
certain clauses he submitted to him.
Russia, however, was in no haste to evacuate Cattaro, and the Emperor
Alexander began to augment his army; so from September, 1806, it became
evident that if France declared war against Prussia, she would have to
encounter Russia also. In the first meeting concerning these affairs
Clarke said, "that the convention recently concluded with Russia
was for France equivalent to a victory; and that henceforward his
master, the Emperor Napoleon, had the right of proposing articles more
advantageous than those he had lately made." He qualified the terms of
the treaty which he wished them to adopt, and in particular _l'uti
possedetis_; of vague conversations on the politics of Rome, he said
that Bonaparte had never adopted this _uti possedetis_ for a basis,
without which Moravia, Styria, and Carniola would have remained still
in his hands.
Similar language, encumbered by diplomatic technicalities, was applied
to the two envoys of Fox, but failed to succeed with them, as they
were resolved not to depart in a single instance from the basis of the
position taken before by the envoy of Prince Talleyrand. The death of
Charles Fox put an end to all the hopes of peace, although Lauderdale
and Champagny did not despair of procuring it until the 6th of October;
but by this time Clarke had set out for Germany, having accompanied
Napoleon to the Prussian campaign. After the two battles of the 14th
October, he was named Governor of Erfurt, a fortified city on the Gera,
and capital of the Elector of Mentz. It was then crowded with Prussian
prisoners, and with sick and wounded Frenchmen.
For having been more in the palaces than in the camps of Bonaparte, and
being, moreover, of foreign blood, Clarke was reproached with being
more of a diplomatist than a soldier by those who were envious of the
favour shown him by the Emperor. While at Erfurt he caused the Saxon
grenadiers of Hündt to take arms, and supplied them with ammunition,
colours, and several pieces of cannon.
On the 27th Napoleon summoned him to Berlin, and appointed him
governor, saying:--
"I wish that in the _same year_ you should have under your orders the
capitals of two monarchies we have conquered--Prussia and Austria."
"Thus Clarke, the inevitable Clarke, was appointed Governor of
Berlin," says De Bourienne, "and under his administration the wretched
inhabitants, who could not flee, were overwhelmed by every species
of impost and oppression. As in the execution of every measure there
operated the most servile compliance with the orders of Napoleon, so
the name of Clarke is held in detestation throughout Prussia."
The measures of Clarke, as Governor of Berlin, were doubtless
mortifying, ruinous, and often sanguinary; but then it must be
remembered that he was compelled to enforce the iron will, and obey the
stern orders, of his inflexible master; though it must be acknowledged
that it would have been more noble in him to have softened them to
the vanquished Prussians. The military contributions were rigorously
levied, and those were not the least of the severities exercised
upon the people of Berlin. Offences were uselessly created, and then
barbarously judged of by a military commission.
The punishment of the unfortunate Burgomaster of Ciritz is forgotten
amid the many barbarous executions of which Prussia became the theatre,
and against which her people dared not protest. When the king,
Frederick William, found himself seated with Clarke at the table of
Louis XVIII. in 1815, he could not refrain from bitterly reproaching
Clarke with what he termed "the useless murder of the father of a
family."
"Sire," responded Clarke, "it was an unfortunate error."
"An error, monsieur?" reiterated the king, striking his hand upon the
table; "an error--it was a crime!"
Withal, it must be acknowledged that Clarke, in the high place he
occupied, fulfilled, in every way, the trust reposed in him by
Napoleon; and that during his command at Berlin, which occupied a year,
he gave ample proof of his inflexible probity; and we may perhaps
believe, that many of the accusations made against him were the echoes
of those complaints which are naturally raised by the vanquished
against the troops of the victor. Doubtless he would have received
greater praise had he striven to please others more, and his master
less. By the official collections of Schoell, we are informed that
Vendomme one day wished to appropriate to himself the magnificent
furniture in the palace of Potsdam, where he resided; but that Clarke,
by his determined intervention, forced him to relinquish the idea.
Clarke was again named minister of war, _vice_ Marshal Berthier,
Duke of Neufchatel and Prince of Wagram. He acquitted himself with
great credit during his administration, which was prolonged without
interruption for several years; but it was marked by two remarkable
episodes--the descent upon Walcheren in 1809, and the conspiracy of
Mallet in 1812. But we ought previously to have mentioned that in 1808
Clarke had been ennobled by the title of Count Hunebourg, and in 1809
he was created Duc de Feltre, from a town in Venetian Lombardy.
The descent of the British upon Walcheren took Clarke by surprise;
but seconded by Bernadotte and Fouche he collected, in less than five
weeks, an army of 100,000 men, near the mouths of the Scheldt, to watch
their operations; but the swamps of South Beveland, and the Walcheren
fever, proved more deadly to the British troops than the bayonets of
France.
When Napoleon was absent on his disastrous Russian campaign, the
unfortunate disturbance, or rather wild enterprise of the republican
General Mallet, with his compatriots Guidal and Lahoire, placed Paris
for some hours in the hands of an armed mob. The coolness and presence
of mind exhibited by Clarke during this momentous crisis is above all
common praise. Mallet forged an account of Bonaparte's death; and on
obtaining twelve hundred men from the 10th cohort of the National
Guard, made prisoners M. Pasquer and Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, and
assailing General Hullin, Commandant of Paris, in his quarters, shot
him through the head by a pistol-ball. Mallet led his party to seize
Clarke as minister of war; but the plot was soon discovered, and Mallet
was captured and disarmed. This finished his proposed reassertion of
the Republic, and fourteen of his followers were put to death, while
Clarke ordered the arrest of many others upon very slight suspicions.
He then dispatched to Bonaparte a report, which displayed his own
vigilance and acuteness in escaping the snare into which General
Hullin, Colonel Soulier, Savary, and Pasquer had fallen so easily.
The excessive zeal of Clarke began to relax about the end of 1813,
although his language always continued the same; thus, when Napoleon,
acting under the pressure of his disasters in Russia, proposed to make
a peace, and yield up some of his conquests, the Duc de Feltre, knowing
how to touch one of the sensitive chords in his breast, said, "that he
would consider the Emperor dishonoured if he consented to abandon the
smallest village which had been united to the Empire by a senatorial
decree!"
"What a fine thing it is to talk!" added old Bourienne.
Clarke's opinion, however, prevailed with Napoleon, and the war, so
fatal to him, continued; though without doubt, in his secret soul,
he had begun to see the exact and perilous position of the Emperor.
Before the startling events of March, 1814, when the allies advanced
upon Paris, and before the communications of Joseph had forced the
determination of the Assembly, the acute Clarke had advised, very
decidedly, the departure of Maria Louisa, who set out at once for
Blois. The ostentatious language with which he accompanied this
advice failed to deceive any one; but in spite of his efforts it was
singularly cold and discouraging.
He commenced his oration by a vivid picture of the conflicting state of
parties, and of the state of Paris and its environs; and his enemies
accused him not only of exaggerating the dangers which menaced the
capital, but of concealing its actual resources; but one fact is
evident, Clarke was clearly and honestly of opinion that Paris was
indefensible, and that to resist would be to destroy it! It is said
that Bonaparte had a contrary opinion, though it was not then publicly
avowed.
When once Maria Louisa had left Paris, Clarke, foreseeing its certain
capitulation, did not take the necessary measures either to defend it
or to check the progress of the allies. For three days he did not open
the arsenals to the Parisians, nor would he allow them to transport the
cannon from the Hôtel des Invalides, and the Ecole Militaire to the
heights about the city; finally he clubbed all the troops of the line
about Montmartre. "Posterity," says a recent writer, "will decide if
these measures were correct."
Then followed the battle of Paris; Marshal Marmont's return within its
walls; the nights of the 30th and 31st of March; the capitulation;
the entry of the allies, and the strange enthusiasm with which the
vacillating population received them. Napoleon was dethroned by a
decree of the Senate, and a Provisional Government was formed; and
changing, like many others, in that time of change, to this new
government, Clarke sent in his formal adhesion on the 8th of April,
about one week after Paris was taken.
On the 4th of the following June he was created, by Louis XVIII., a
peer of France.
When Marshal Soult retired from office, King Louis appointed Clarke
Minister of War--the same post he had held under the Emperor, who was
then maturing plans of new operations in the little isle of Elba.
It was tauntingly said of Clarke that it was his destiny and misfortune
to see the affairs of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons go to wreck,
while entrusted to his care.
The _Memoirs of St. Helena_ assure us that Clarke, during the events
of the Hundred Days, wished to _retake_ service under the Emperor
Napoleon! If so, how different was his conduct from the faith that
characterized Ney, Cambronne, and Macdonald! A rumour of this, in 1815,
led to the immediate departure of Clarke for Ghent, where, at the
fugitive court of Louis XVIII., he exercised his functions as Minister
of War; and from thence, some time after, he travelled to London,
charged with a mission from the king to the Prince Regent, afterwards
George IV.
During the time the allied armies occupied Paris, Clarke had a
remarkable interview with the King of Prussia. On this occasion he was
accompanied by M. de Bourienne and Marshal Berthier. They remained for
some time in the saloon, before his Prussian Majesty appeared from his
closet, and when he did so, the embarrassment of his manner, and the
cloudy severity of his countenance, was apparent to the three visitors.
"Marshal," said he to Berthier, "I should have preferred receiving you
as a peaceful visitor at Berlin; but war has its successes, as well
as its reverses. Your troops are brave and ably led; but you cannot
oppose numbers, and Europe is armed against the Emperor; patience has
its limits. You have passed no little time, marshal, in making war on
Germany, and I have great pleasure in saying to you that I shall never
forget your conduct, your justice, and moderation in those seasons of
misfortune."
Marshal Berthier, who deserved this eulogium, made a suitable reply;
after which the King of Prussia turned sternly to the Duc de Feltre,
saying,--
"As for _you_, General Clarke, I cannot say the same of your conduct
as of the marshal's. The inhabitants of Berlin will long remember your
government. You abused victory strangely, and carried to an extreme
measures of rigour and vexation. If I have an advice to give you, it
is--_never show your face in Prussia_."
"Clarke was so overwhelmed by this reception from a crowned head," says
M. de Bourienne, "that Berthier and myself, each taking an arm, were
absolutely obliged to support him down the grand stair."
On returning to King Louis, at Ghent, he resumed his duties of Minister
for the War Department; and assuredly his task was both a severe and a
difficult one.
He had to arrange the disbanding of the Imperial and the
re-organization of a Royal army; he had to examine and decide upon the
various claims presented by hundreds of soldiers; he had to satisfy
the demands of two thousand officers who adhered to the king, and to
send them into the interior; he had to classify nine thousand officers
of the disbanded army; to arrange for the pay of six thousand others
who were _re-formed_--that is, continued on pay, but without being
regimented; he had to examine six thousand claims for arrears of pay
and pensions, claims that could admit of no delay, and which amounted
to forty-six millions of francs; he had to organize the Royal Garde du
Corp; to reconstitute the gendarmerie; to provide for the maintenance
of the allied armies of occupation; and all this he had to do, amid
obstacles, disorders, and complexities without example.
Such was the mighty mass of labour submitted to the care of Clarke; and
of this herculean task he nobly and ably acquitted himself in less than
two years.
All impartial writers unite in exculpating him from the angry and
unjust accusation of peculating with the enormous sums which were
required and absorbed by the re-organization of the French army. But he
was severely handled by military men for instituting those tribunals
styled _Les Cours Prévotales_.
In June, 1815, Clarke was with Louis XVIII. at Arnouville, and
while there saved his friend, François Marquis de Lagrange, a
lieutenant-general who in 1813 commanded the 3rd Regiment of Gardes
d'Honneur, from great danger, if not from death. The marquis had been
accused of offering his services to Napoleon, and hastily arrived at
Arnouville with his son, on the 30th June. As he was about to wait upon
Louis he was assailed by several soldiers, in whose hearts the love of
Napoleon was strong. They called him a _traitor_, and tore away his
sword, cross, and epaulettes. On becoming aware of these outrages,
Clarke sent two influential officers to repress the tumult, and himself
led the marquis to Louis XVIII., who appointed him captain of the Black
Musketeers.
The zeal which Clarke now employed in the cause of the house of Bourbon
was ultimately the means of his downfall. Louis XVIII., who each day
conceded more and more to the enemies of his dynasty, after bestowing
upon Clarke the bâton of a Marshal of France, displaced him from
office, and appointed Gouvin St. Cyr in his room.
We know that after his dismissal all was changed in the department of
the Minister of War.
The position in which Clarke found himself during the last years of his
stirring, active, and useful life was very painful and humiliating,
especially to one of so proud a spirit as his. Some of the more
favoured personages who crowded the court of Louis XVIII., could not
behold with a favourable eye this foreigner, who had been the War
Minister of the great Napoleon, a confidant of his, and his co-operator
in a thousand schemes of conquest; on the other hand, his old comrades
of the Imperial army affected to see in Clarke a deserter, a transferer
of his allegiance, and, indeed, all but a traitor. Those whose base
extortions he had repressed in other times now joined their clamours
against him, and the Royalists cared not to say a word in his defence.
Thus, at the end of his career, he was unjustly despised alike for his
talents and virtues, as for his mistakes and weaknesses--for the good
he had done as well as for evil. Clarke now found himself isolated and
abandoned, and the conviction of this, together with the coldness with
which he was treated, sank deeply into his proud and sensitive heart.
It aggravated an illness which preyed upon him, and he died on the 28th
of October, 1818, in his fifty-third year.
Such was the career of the Duc de Feltre, one of the most famous of the
Irish exiles.
Clarke was master of many languages. He wrote with ease, with elegance,
and with correctness; his style was often brilliant, and he knew
thoroughly all that appertained to the details of a war administration.
The state of complete disorganization in which he found the French
service after March, 1814, proves the admirable tact and skill with
which he could bring order out of disorder.
Many of the old Imperialists, his enemies, coarsely accused him of
treason and treachery, but Napoleon takes care partly to exculpate him
from charges so severe. On being asked at St. Helena if he believed
that Clarke had been true to him, the fallen Emperor said, with a sigh--
"True to me--yes, when I was in my strength;" and after a time he
added--"I cannot boast of him being more constant to me than Fortune."
This lessens the alleged crime of Clarke, while, at the same time, it
lessens his nobility of conduct; though it must be acknowledged that he
did not leave Napoleon until he could no longer be of service to him.
The Emperor was not easily deceived as to the fidelity of a follower.
From Bourienne we know that, in 1796 and 1797, after all that passed
between Napoleon and Clarke, the former still trusted in the latter,
and never attempted to interrupt his despatches to the Directory or
to the Chevalier de la Croix; and nothing was ever found in them
displeasing to the Commander-in-chief.
Two great traits in the character of Clarke were, first, his hatred
of all peculation and political knavery; the other was his mania for
office, and the despatches and details connected therewith. So poor was
he during the earlier years of his career, that Napoleon had to portion
one of his daughters; and no instance of profusion or luxury has been
cited against him.
Inflated by his patent of nobility, he wished to make his genealogy
great and lofty, and one day he believed that he had discovered his
descent, by the female side, from the Plantagenets--an idea which
exceedingly amused Napoleon, who once said to him in a numerous
company, about the time of his projected invasion of Britain,--
"Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English
throne--you ought _now_ to make them good!"[16]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]
GENERAL KILMAINE,
COMMANDANT OF LOMBARDY AND GENERAL OF THE ARMÉE D'ANGLETERRE.