"How is the language of the writers of the Debats, who called
themselves royalists, to be understood? Was not Charles X. at Coblenz?
Did not Chateaubriand emigrate with the King and the princes? Did he
not follow Louis XVIII. to Ghent? Was he not in his council at the very
hour of the battle of Waterloo? They might as well have stigmatized the
white flag and demanded the proscription of the King's dynasty. But
such was their blindness that they feared nothing for it. 'The throne
runs no risk,' said Chateaubriand, 'let us tremble for liberty only.'
Yet the nomination of the Polignac ministry was an error. It appeared
to be a provocation, a sort of defiance. Charles X. doubtless only
wished to defend himself, but in choosing such ministers at such an
hour, he appeared to be willing to attack."
From the debut of the new cabinet, the Opposition, to use a recent
expression, showed itself irreconcilable. It raised a long cry of
anger, and declared war to the death on Prince Polignac.
"It is in vain," said the Debats, "that the ministers demand of Time to
efface with a sweep of his wing their days, their actions, their
thoughts, of yesterday; these live for them, as for us. The shadow of
their past goes before them and traces their route. They cannot turn
aside; they must march; they must advance.--But I wish to turn
back.--You cannot.--But I shall support liberty, the Charter, the
Opposition.--You cannot. March, then, march, under the spur of
necessity, to the abyss of Coups d'Etat! March! Your life has judged
and condemned you. Your destiny is accomplished."
The man who excited hatreds so violent was Jules de Polignac. He was
born at Versailles, May 14, 1780. As the German historian, Gervinus,
has said: "His past weighed upon him like a lash of political
interdict. He was the son of the Duchess of Polignac, who had been the
object of so many calumnies, and who had never been pardoned for the
intimate friendship with which she was honored by the unfortunate
queen, Marie Antoinette, a friendship that had evoked against her,
first all the jealousies of the envious courtiers, and then all the
aversion of the people. It was believed that a like favoritism could be
recognized in the relations of the son of the Duchess with Charles X.
To this unpopularity, inherited from his mother, was joined another
that was directed against the person of the emigre."
After having been one of the courtiers of the little court at Coblenz,
he had taken service for some time in Russia, and then passed into
England, where he had been one of the most intimate confidants, and one
of the most active agents of the Count d'Artois. Sent secretly into
France, with his elder brother, the Duke Armand de Polignac, he was,
like the latter, compromised in the Cadoudal conspiracy. Their trial is
remarkable for the noble strife of devotion, in which each of the
brothers pleaded the cause of the other at the expense of his own.
Armand was condemned to death. His wife threw herself at the feet of
the First Consul, who, thanks to the intercession of Josephine,
commuted the penalty of death to perpetual confinement. Jules was
condemned to prison, and shared the captivity of his brother. Confined
at first in the castle of Ham, then in the Temple, then at Vincennes,
they obtained, at the time of the marriage of Napoleon with Marie
Louise, their transfer to a hospital. There they knew the General
Mallet, but the part they were suspected of taking in his conspiracy
was never proven. When the allied armies entered France, they succeeded
in escaping, and rejoined the Count d'Artois at Vesoul. They penetrated
to Paris some days before the capitulation, and displayed the white
flag there the 3d of March, 1814.
Peer of France, field-marshal, ambassador, the Prince Jules de Polignac
was one of the favorites of the Restoration. On the proposition of M.
de Chateaubriand, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had him named,
in 1823, ambassador to London, where he had shown a genuine talent for
diplomacy. The example of England made him think that in France the
liberties of the constitutional regime could be combined with the
directing influence of an aristocracy. That was his error and the cause
of his fall. Some weeks before his accession to the ministry, he had
solemnly affirmed in the Chamber of Peers, that he considered the
Charter as a solemn pact, on which rested the monarchical institutions
of France, and as the heavenly sign of a serene future. But the
liberals did not believe his word, and accused him of striving to
re-establish the old regime.
Even at court the accession of the Prince de Polignac did not fail to
cause apprehension. Charles X., having announced to the Duchess of
Gontaut that he was going to appoint him minister, added: "This news
must give you pleasure; you know him well, I believe." The Duchess
replied: "He has been absent a long time. I only knew him when very
young." The King resumed: "Do not speak of it; it is my secret as yet."
Madame de Gontaut could not keep from smiling, for she held several
letters from London in her hand, among others one from the
sister-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, announcing the news. Charles
X. wished to see the letters. "He is good, loyal," they said, "loving
the King as one loves a friend, but feeble, and with bad surroundings.
It is doubted whether he can ever rise to the height of the post in
which the King wishes to place him."
Charles X., wounded by the indiscretion of the Prince, and also by that
of the Duke of Wellington, who divulged what he himself was keeping
secret, returned the letter to Madame de Gontaut, and remarked:--
"It is very thoughtless in Jules to have spoken of it so soon, and in
the Duke to have published it." The Duchess of Gontaut, who was used to
frank talk with the King, said: "In the circumstances existing, I long
for, I confess it frankly, and at the risk of displeasing Your Majesty,
yes, I long for the Martignac ministry."
Then, adds the Duchess in her unpublished Memoirs, the King, more
impatient than ever, turned his back on me, and took his way to his
apartment. I had had the courage to tell him my thought and the truth.
I did not repent it. When we saw each other again the same day he did
not speak to me again of it.
One of those most devoted to the elder branch, the Duke Ambroise de la
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, also says in his Memoirs:--
"The King sincerely wished for the Charter, whatever may be said, but
he wished for the monarchy; he, therefore, decided to change ministers
who had made promises that seemed to him fatal, and to replace them by
others whose principles suited him better. He was not happy in this
choice, it must be agreed. He took as Minister of Foreign Affairs and
President of the Council the Prince de Polignac. For a long time public
opinion had foreseen this choice, and dreaded it. At the commencement
of the Restoration M. de Polignac for more than a year had refused to
recognize the Charter and to swear fidelity to it, which made him
regarded as the pronounced enemy of our institutions. Was this
antipathy real? I do not think so. He had for a long time lived in
England, as ambassador, and was thoroughly imbued with principles at
once very constitutional and very aristocratic, after the English
fashion. His devotion was great, as well as his personal merit, but his
resources as a statesman were not so much so; he took his desire to do
well for the capacity to do well, and he mistook."
When he assumed the direction of affairs the Prince de Polignac was
wholly surprised at the systematic and obstinate opposition that he
encountered. As M. Guizot said, "he was sincerely astonished that he
was not willingly accepted as a minister devoted to the constitutional
regime. But the public, without troubling itself to know if he were
sincere or not, persisted in seeing in him the champion of the old
regime and the standard-bearer of the counter-Revolution."
Although he had passed a part of his life in England, first as emigre,
then as ambassador, and had married as his first wife an English lady,
Miss Campbell, and as his second another, the daughter of Lord
Radcliffe, the Prince de Polignac was French at heart.
No Minister of Foreign Affairs in France had in higher degree the
sentiment of the national dignity. Yet this is the way the Debats
expressed itself, the 16th of August, 1829, about a man who, the next
year, at the time of the glorious Algiers Expedition, was to hold
toward England language so proud and firm:--
"The manifesto of M. de Polignac comes to us from England. That is very
simple. We have a minister who scarcely knows how to speak anything but
English. It takes time to relearn one's native tongue when one has
forgotten it for many years. It appears even that one never regains the
accent in all its freedom and purity. In fact, the English have not
given us M. de Polignac; they have sold him to us. That people
understand commerce so well."
Despite all the violent criticisms, all the implacable hatreds by which
he was incessantly assailed, the Prince de Polignac was a noble
character, and no one should forget the justness of soul with which,
from the commencement to the end of his career, he supported misfortune
and captivity. The Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld, afterwards
the Duke of Doudeauville, says, in his Memoirs:--
"The purest honor, the loftiest disinterestedness, the sincerest
devotion, are not everything, there is needed a capacity for affairs, a
knowledge of men, which experience alone procures and which even the
strongest will cannot give. M. de Polignac had all the qualities of the
most devoted subject, but his talent did not rise to the height of his
position. If it had been necessary only to suffer and to march to
death, no one, surely, could have equalled him; but more was requisite,
and he remained beneath the level of the circumstances he thought he
was overcoming; the fall of the throne was the consequence. How he
developed, though, and grew great when in duress, and who should
flatter himself that he could bear up with a firmness more unshaken
against the severest trials? If M. de Polignac is not a type of the
statesman, he will at least remain the complete model of the virtues of
the Christian and the private citizen."
The Prince de Polignac was mistaken, but he acted in good faith. No one
can dispute his faults, but none can suspect the purity of his
intentions. Unfortunately his royalism had in it something of mysticism
and ecstasy that made of this gallant man a sort of illumine. He
sincerely believed that he had received from God the mission to save
the throne and the altar, and foreseeing neither difficulties nor
obstacles, regarding all uncertainty and all fear as unworthy of a
gentleman and a Christian, he had in himself and in his ideas, that
blind, imperturbable confidence that is the characteristic of fanatics.
In a period less troubled, this great noble would perhaps have been a
remarkable minister of foreign affairs, but in the stormy time when he
took the helm in hand, he had neither sufficient prudence nor
sufficient experience to resist the tempest and save the ship from the
wreck in which the dynasty was to go down.