the commissioners of the four great powers who were to
accompany him having arrived, the former drew up the imperial
guard in the grand courtyard at Fontainebleau to take leave of
them. 'Soldiers,' said he, 'I have one mission left to fulfil
in life,--to recount to posterity the glorious deeds we have
done together.' Would to Heaven he had kept his word and done
nothing else! He kissed the flag, and his brave soldiers, who
only saw the man who so often led them on to victory, burst
into tears. Seven or eight hundred of them were to form the
army left to him who had had a million soldiers at his
command, and they were sent in advance, Napoleon going by
another road, unescorted save by General Drouot, Bertrand, and
the four foreign commissioners with their people. In the first
departments through which they passed ... the people who had
been eye-witnesses of the invasion forgot the evil wrought by
Napoleon, and only saw the defender of his country. They
shouted 'Long live the Emperor! Down with foreigners!' But
beyond Lyons, where the foe never penetrated, the population
became hostile: old royalist and Catholic passions were
revived in proportion as they went farther south; the mob
cried 'Long live the King! down with the tyrant!' and others
howled 'Long live the allies!' At Avignon and Organ a furious
rabble attacked the carriages, demanding that the tyrant
should be handed over to them to be hung or thrown into the
Rhone. The man who braved the storm of shot and shell with
utter indifference gave way before these ignoble perils, and
disguised himself; otherwise the commissioners could scarcely
have saved his life at Orgon. The sad journey closed at the
Gulf of St. Raphael, on the coast of Provence. ... An English
frigate awaited him and bore him to Elba, where he landed at
Porto-Ferraio, May 4. While the Empire was crumbling to dust
... and the fallen Emperor went into exile, the new government
was working hard to hold its own at Paris. The royalists were
at sword's points with the national sovereignty party in the
commission chosen by the senate to draw up a constitution. The
pretender's agent, Abbé de Montesquiou, failed to win
acceptance of the principle that royal right is superior to
the nation's will; and the formula adopted was as follows:
'The French people freely call to the throne of France, Louis
Stanislas Xavier de France, brother of the late king, and,
after him, the other members of the house of Bourbon.' Thus
they did not recognize in the king whom they elected the title
of Louis XVIII., and did not admit that between him and his
brother, Louis XVI., there had been a rightful king, the poor
child who died in the Temple and whom royalists called Louis
XVII. The reign of Louis Stanislas Xavier was to date from the
day when he swore allegiance to the Constitution: the
executive power was vested in the king, who shared the
legislative power with the Senate and a Chamber of Deputies.
The Constitution sanctioned individual liberty, freedom of
worship and the press, the sale of national goods, the public
debt, and proclaimed oblivion of all acts committed since the
beginning of the Revolution. The principles of 1789 were
maintained, and in the sad state of France there was nothing
better to be done than to rally round this Constitution, which
was voted by the Senate, April 6, and accepted by the
Legislature. ... The Senate's lack of popularity gave the
royalist party hope that the act of April 6 might be
retracted, and at this time that party won a faint success in
a matter on which they laid great stress. Count d' Artois was
on his way to Paris, and declared that he would not lay aside
the white cockade on entering. The temporary government
ordered the national guard to assume the white cockade, and
let Count d'Artois in without conditions (April 12), He was
received in solemn state, the marshals marching before him,
still wearing their tri-colored cockades and plumes, which the
government dared not attack.
{1359}
The rabble was cold, but the middle classes received the
prince favorably and he proved gracious to every one. ...
D'Artois ... insisted on being recognized, unconditionally, as
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as he had entered Paris
without making terms; but this time the Senate and temporary
government did not yield. They intended that the prince should
make a solemn promise, in his brother's name, in regard to the
Constitution. The czar interfered and explained to D' Artois
that the allies were pledged to the Senate and the nation, and
he was forced to submit and receive the lieutenant-generalcy
of the kingdom from the Senate, 'until Louis Stanislas Xavier
of France should accept the Constitutional Charter.' ... The
day after his proclamation as lieutenant-general, the white
cockade was finally adopted, and ... imposed upon the army and
various public buildings, though the national cockade was
still worn by many French soldiers from the Garonne to the
Elbe, and many warlike deeds still signalized the final
efforts of their arms, even after Napoleon had laid aside his
sword. ... By degrees the truce became universal, and the next
question was to fix the terms of peace. ... The enemy held
nothing but Paris and the unfortified towns, French garrisons
still occupying all the strongholds of France, old and new,
and several important places far beyond the Rhine. ... This
was a powerful means of gaining, not the preservation of the
natural frontiers, which could no longer be hoped for, but at
least an important advance on the limits of the ancient
monarchy. Unluckily a movement, natural but hasty, broke out
all over France, to claim the immediate evacuation of her soil
by foreign armies;"--an impatience which allowed no time for
bargaining in the matter, and which precipitated an agreement
(April 23) with the allied powers "to leave the French
dominion as it had been on the 1st of January, 1792, in
proportion as the places still occupied beyond those limits by
French troops should be evacuated and restored to the allies.
... This compact surrendered to the allies, without any
compensation, 58 strongholds, 12,600 pieces of ordnance,
arsenals and magazines filled with vast supplies." The new
king, calling himself Louis XVIII., arrived in Paris on the 3d
of May, from England, where he had latterly resided. He had
offended the czar, ruffled public feeling in France, even
before he arrived, by saying publicly to the English people
that he owed his restoration, under Providence, to them.
Negotiations for a definite treaty of peace were opened at
once. "At Metternich's suggestion, the allies decided to
conclude their arrangements with France in Paris, and to
reserve general arrangements with Europe for a congress at
Vienna.
See VIENNA: THE CONGRESS OF.
Talleyrand did not object, although this plan was evidently
unfavorable to France. ... The royal council directed
Talleyrand to try to win for the northern frontier those
million people promised beyond the old limits; but Louis X
VIII., by angering the czar, completed the sad work of April
23. Alexander thought of renewing with the Bourbons the
alliance that he had planned with Napoleon, and marrying to
the Duke de Berri, Louis's nephew, that one of his sisters to
whom Napoleon preferred Marie Louise. Louis ... responded
churlishly to the czar's advances. Accordingly, when France
demanded a solid frontier, including the South of Belgium, ...
Lord Castlereagh absolutely refused, and was supported by
Prussia, hostile to France, and by Austria, indifferent on
that score, but disposed to follow England in everything.
Russia did not side with France. ... The allies were willing
to grant, in place of the old dominion of the monarchy, on the
Rhine side, the line of the Queich, which opened communication
with Landau, and to the southeast the department of Vaucluse
(once County Venaissin) given up by the Pope, besides Chambéry
and a part of Savoy; finally, in the Jura region, Montbéliard.
This made nearly 600,000 people. As for the colonies, England
reluctantly returned Martinique, Guadeloupe, and the Isle of
Bourbon, but refused to restore the Isle de France [or
Mauritius, captured in 1810], that great military post which
is to the Indian Ocean what Malta is to the Mediterranean.
This island was bravely defended for some years by its
governor. ... The English declared that they would also keep
Malta, taken from France, and the Cape of Good Hope, wrested
from Holland, saying that all these belonged to them, being on
the road to India. ... Secret articles provided that Holland,
under the rule of the House of Orange, should be increased by
the countries ceded by France, between the sea, the French
frontier of 1790, and the Meuse (Austrian Netherlands and
Liége). The countries ceded by France on the left bank of the
Rhine were to be divided as 'compensation' among the German
states. Austria was to have the country bounded by the Po,
Ticino, and Lake Maggiore, that is, the old Venetian states,
Milan, and Mantua. The territory of the former Republic of
Genoa was to be given to the King of Sardinia. Such was the
end of the wars of the Empire. Republican France reached the
goal of the old monarchy, the natural limits of ancient Gaul;
the Empire lost them."
_H. Martin,
Popular History of France,
volume 2, chapter 17._
"The Peace of Paris [signed May 30] was followed by some
subsidiary treaties. ... By a Convention of June 3rd between
Austria and Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph restored to Austria the
Tyrol with the Vorarlberg, the principality of Salzburg, the
district of the Inn and the Hausrück. During the visit of the
Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia to London in June,
it was agreed that the Article of the Peace of Paris
stipulating the aggrandisement of Holland, should, be carried
out by the annexation of Belgium to that country, an
arrangement which was accepted by the Sovereign of the
Netherlands, July 21st 1814."
_T. H. Dyer,
History of Modern Europe,
book 7, chapter 16._
ALSO IN:
_A. de Lamartine,
History of the Restoration,
books 13-14 and 16 (volumes 1-2)._
_E. E. Crowe,
History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,
volume 1, chapter 3._
{1360}
FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.
Ten months of Bourbon rule and its follies.
Return of Napoleon from Elba.
Flight of the King.
The Hundred Days.
Preparations for war.
"The peace of Paris did not endure a year. Ten months of
Bourbon rule, vengeful, implacable, stupid; alike violent in
act and in language; sufficed to bring France once more to the
brink of revolution. Two acts alone are sufficient to
demonstrate the folly of the royalists--the resumption of the
white flag, and the changing of the numbers of the regiments.
A prudent king would have adopted the tricolour when he agreed
to a constitutional charter, and would have refrained from
wounding military sensibility by destroying the numbers of the
regiments. But more stupid than these acts was the political
policy pursued, a policy which aroused on all sides suspicions
of what was worse than the grinding but gilded despotism of
Napoleon--namely, that the Government favoured a forcible
resumption of the confiscated lands, the restoration of
tithes, and of the abolished exactions and imposts of
feudalism. It has been surmised, and with much reason, that
had Napoleon not reappeared a popular movement would have
extorted from the king a really constitutional government. In
that case France might have taken some real steps towards a
free government, and the bases of liberty rather than of
equality might have been laid. But while the Powers were
wrangling at Vienna, and the Bourbons were irritating France,
Napoleon was watching from Elba for the opportunity of
resuming empire. It was not in the nature of the man to yield
passively to anything, even to the inevitable. So long as a
chance remained he looked out keenly for the propitious hour.
He selected Elba as a residence because thence 'he could keep
an eye upon France and upon the Bourbons.' It was his duty, he
said, to guard the throne of France for his family and for his
son. Thus, in making peace at Fontainebleau, he only bowed to
a storm he could not then resist, and cherished in his mind
the project of an imperial restoration. The hour for which he
waited came at length. February, 1815, he had arrived at the
conclusion that with the aid of the army he could overthrow
the Bourbons, whose government, he said, was good for priests,
nobles, and countesses of the old time, but worth nothing to
the living generation. The army, he knew, was still, and would
be always, devoted to him. ... He had weighed all the chances
for and against the success of his enterprise, and he had
arrived at the conclusion that he should succeed; for,
'Fortune had never deserted him on great occasions.' It has
been said that his departure was precipitated by a report of
the dissolution of the Congress of Vienna. ... It is possible,
indeed, that the rumour of an intention to confine him upon an
island in the Atlantic may have exercised some influence over
him; but the real reasons for the selection of the 26th of
February were that he was tired of inactivity, and convinced
that the favourable moment had arrived. Therefore, instructing
Murat to second him by assuming a strong position in front of
Ancona, he embarked his faithful Thousand, and set sail for
France. On the 1st of March he landed on the shores of the
Gulf of Juan, and on the 20th he entered the Tuileries. As he
had predicted, the army rallied to the tricolour; the generals
could neither restrain nor guide their soldiers; the Bourbon
dukes and princes, and the brave Duchess of Angoulême--'the
only man of the family'--were utterly powerless before the
universal military disaffection; and one after the other they
were chased out of France. The army had restored Napoleon.
Louis XVIII. drove out of Paris by the road to St. Denis on
the 19th, a few hours before Napoleon, on the 20th, drove in
by the Barrier of Italy; and on the 23rd, after a short stay
at Lille, the King was safe in Ghent. 'The great question is,'
wrote Lord Castlereagh to the Duke of Wellington three days
afterwards, while yet in ignorance of the event, 'can the
Bourbons get Frenchmen to fight for them against Frenchmen?'
The result showed that they could not. In the then state of
France the army was master of France. Louis and his ministers
had done nothing to conciliate, and almost everything to
irritate, the people; and even so early as November, 1814,
Wellington did not see what means the King had of resisting
the attack of a few hundred officers determined to risk
everything. During the period occupied by Napoleon in passing
from Elba to Paris, the conduct of' the sovereigns and
diplomatists assembled at Vienna offered a striking contrast
to the weakness and inaptitude of the Bourbons. ... That there
was fear in Vienna is manifest, but the acts of the Allied
Powers show that fear speedily gave place to resolution. For,
as early as the 12th of' March, before the Allies knew where
Napoleon was, or anything about him, except that he was
somewhere at large in France, they drew up that famous
declaration, and signed it the next day, in which they
declared that he had broken the sole legal tie to which his
existence was attached, and that it was possible to keep with
him 'neither peace nor truce.' 'The Powers, in consequence,'
so runs this document, 'declare that Napoleon Buonaparte is
placed beyond the pale of civil and social relations, and
that, as a common enemy and disturber of the peace of the
world, he has delivered himself over to public justice.' This
declaration, which has been the subject of vehement criticism,
was the natural consequence of the prevailing and correct
appreciation of Napoleon's character. There was not a nation
in Europe which felt the slightest particle of confidence or
trust in him. Hence this declaration, made so promptly, was
drawn up in ignorance of any professions he might make,
because, beforehand, Europe felt that no professions of his
could be relied on. The news of his success was followed by a
treaty, adopted on the 25th of March, renewing the alliance of
Chaumont, whereby Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia
bound themselves to provide each 150,000 men; to employ, in
addition, all their resources, and to work together for the
common end--the maintenance of the Treaty of Paris, and of the
stipulations determined on and signed at the Congress of
Vienna. Further, they engaged not to lay down their arms but
by common consent; nor before the object of the war should
have been attained; nor, continues the document, 'until
Buonaparte shall have been rendered absolutely unable to
create disturbance, and to renew attempts for possessing
himself of supreme power in France.' All the Powers of Europe
generally, and Louis XVIII. specially, were invited to accede
to the treaty; but, at the instance of Lord Castlereagh, the
Four Great Powers declared in the most solemn manner that,
although they desired to see his Most Christian Majesty
restored to the throne, and also to contribute to that
'auspicious result,' yet that their 'principles' would not
permit them to prosecute the war 'with a view of imposing any
particular Government on France.' With Napoleon they refused
to hold any communication whatever; and when he sent couriers
to announce that he intended to observe existing treaties,
they were stopped on the frontiers. ...
{1361}
Wellington, on his own responsibility, acted for England,
signed treaties, undertook heavy engagements in her name, and
agreed to command an army to be assembled in Belgium; and
having satisfied, as well as he could, the clamour of 'all'
for subsidies from England, he took his departure from Vienna
on the 29th of March, and arrived in Brussels on the 4th of
April. The British Parliament and nation confirmed readily the
proceedings of the Government and of the Duke of Wellington at
Vienna. ... Napoleon had formed a Ministry on the very evening
of his return to the Tuileries. ... He felt certain that war
would ensue. Knowing that at the moment when he returned from
Elba a large part of the best troops of England were in
America, that the German force on the Rhine was weak, and that
the Russian armies were in Poland, he calculated that the
Allied Powers would not be in a position to open the campaign,
at the earliest, until the middle of July; and, for a moment,
he hoped that, by working on the feelings of his
father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, and by rousing the
anger of the Emperor Alexander against his allies, he would be
able, if not to reduce his enemies to two, England and
Prussia, at least to defer the period of hostilities until the
autumn. ... Before his great schemes of military preparation
were half complete he found himself compelled by events to
begin the war. What he actually did accomplish between March
and June has been the subject of fierce controversy. His
friends exaggerate, his enemies undervalue, his exertions and
their results. But no candid inquirer can fail to see, that if
his energetic activity during this period is far below that of
the Convention when threatened by Europe, it is far above the
standard fixed by his passionate crimes. The real reason why
he failed to raise a larger military force during the hundred
days was that his genius worked upon exhausted materials. The
nation, to use an expressive vulgarism, was 'used up.' ... The
proper conscription for 1815 had been levied in the autumn of
1813. The drafts on the rising generation had been
anticipated, and hence there remained little available except
the old soldiers. ... The result of Napoleon's prodigious
exertions to augment the military force of France appears to
be this: Napoleon found ready to his hand a force of 228,972
men of all arms, officers included, giving a disposable
effective of 155,000 men ready to take the field. By the 18th
of June he had raised this force to 276,982 men, officers
included: that is 247,609 of the line, and 29,373 of the
Imperial Guard. The number disposable for war was 198,180; and
it therefore follows that Napoleon had increased the general
effective by 53,010 men, and that part of it disposable for
war by 48, 180."
_G. Hooper,
Waterloo,
book 1, chapter 1._
ALSO IN:
_Imbert de Saint-Amand,
The Duchess of Angouléme and the two Restorations,
part 1._
_F. P. Guizot,
Memoirs of My Time,
volume 1, chapter 3._
_J. C. Ropes,
The First Napoleon,
lecture 6._
_E. E. Crowe,
History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,
volume 1, chapters 4-6._
_R. H. Horne,
Life of Napoleon, chapters 41-42._
_General Sir N. Campbell,
Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba._
FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.
The Congress of Vienna and the fruits of its labors.
See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.
FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (June).
Napoleon's last campaign.
His final defeat and overthrow at Waterloo.