"If from all the battle-fields of Europe where our Grand Army has left
its members, if from Belgium, where it left the last fragments of its
body, and from the place where Marshal Ney fell shot, there arise cries
of anger that resound in our hearts, if the column of the Grand Army
seems to tremble through all its bronze battalions, whose is the fault?
No, no; nothing is lacking in this ministry of the counter-Revolution.
Waterloo is represented. ... M. de Polignac represents in it the ideas
of the first Emigration, the ideas of Coblenz; M. de La Bourdonnaye the
faction of 1815 with its murderous friendships, its law of
proscription, and its clientele of southern massacres. Coblenz,
Waterloo, 1815, these are the three personages of the ministry. Turn it
how you will, every side dismays. Every side angers. It has no aspect
that is not sinister, no face that is not menacing. Take our hatreds of
thirty years ago, our sorrows and our fears of fifteen years ago, all
are there, all have joined to insult and irritate France. Squeeze,
wring this ministry, it drips only humiliations, misfortunes, dangers."