The Hundred Days--Declaration of the Congress at Vienna--Napoleon
prepares for War--Capitulation of the Duke
d'Angouleme--Insurrection of La Vendee--Murat advances from
Naples--Is Defeated--And takes refuge in France--The
Champ-de-Mai--Dissatisfaction of the Constitutionalists.
The reports so zealously circulated by the Buonapartists, that some at
least of the great European powers were aware, and approved, of the
meditated debarkation at Cannes--and the hopes thus nourished among the
French people, that the new revolution would not disturb the peace of
the world--were very speedily at an end. The instant that the news of
Napoleon's daring movement reached Vienna, the Congress published a
proclamation in these words:--"By breaking the convention which
established him in Elba, Buonaparte destroys the only legal title on
which his existence depended. By appearing again in France, with
projects of confusion and disorder, he has deprived himself of the
protection of the law, and manifested to the universe that there can be
neither peace nor truce with him. The powers consequently declare that
Napoleon Buonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and
social relations, and that, as an enemy and disturber of the
tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public
vengeance." These sentiments underwent no change in consequence of the
apparently triumphant course of Napoleon's adventure. All Europe
prepared once more for war. It was evident that the usurper owed
everything to the French soldiery--that body to which the treaty of
Paris had at once restored 150,000 veterans, idle, and indisposed for
ordinary labour--and that until this ferocious military were effectually
humbled there could be no peace for the world.
A formal treaty was forthwith entered into, by which the four great
powers bound themselves to maintain each of them at least 150,000 troops
in arms, until Buonaparte should either be dethroned, or reduced so low
as no longer to endanger the peace of Europe. The other states of the
continent were to be invited to join the alliance, furnishing
contingents adequate to their respective resources. The King of France
was to be requested to sign the treaty also; but with reference to this
article an explanatory note was affixed, by the representatives of the
Prince Regent of England, denying, on the part of his royal highness,
any wish to force a particular government on the people of France: and
it was further stipulated that in case Britain should not furnish all
the men agreed on, she should compensate by paying at the rate of L30
per annum for every cavalry soldier, and L20 per annum for every foot
soldier under the full number. Such was the treaty of Vienna; but the
zeal of the contracting parties went far beyond the preparations
indicated in its terms. Napoleon was hardly re-seated on his throne ere
he learned that he must in all likelihood maintain it against 300,000
Austrians, 225,000 Russians, 236,000 Prussians, an army of 150,000 men
furnished by the minor states of Germany, 50,000 contributed by the
government of the Netherlands, and 50,000 English, commanded by the Duke
of Wellington;--in all one million eleven thousand soldiers.
His preparations to meet this gigantic confederacy began from the moment
when he re-established himself in the Tuileries. Carnot became once more
minister of war; and what Napoleon and he, when labouring together in
the re-organisation of an army, could effect, had been abundantly
manifested at the commencement of the consulate. The army cantoned in
France, when Buonaparte landed at Cannes, numbered 175,000; the cavalry
had been greatly reduced: and the disasters of 1812, 1813, and 1814,
were visible in the miserable deficiency of military stores and arms,
especially of artillery. By incredible exertions, notwithstanding the
pressure of innumerable cares and anxieties of all kinds, and although
the temper of the nation prevented him from having recourse to the old
method of conscription--the Emperor, ere May was over, had 375,000 men
in arms--including an imperial guard of 40,000 chosen veterans, in the
most splendid state of equipment and discipline, a large and brilliant
force of cavalry, and a train of artillery of proportional extent and
excellence.
Napoleon, however, made sundry attempts to open a negotiation with the
Allies--nor wanted there statesmen, even in England, to lend their best
support to his reclamations. He urged three arguments in defence of his
breach of the convention by which he had become sovereign of Elba: 1st,
the detention of his wife and son by the court of Austria--an affair
with which the king whose dominions he had invaded could have had
nothing to do: 2nd, the nonpayment of his pension--a grievance which
might have furnished a legitimate ground of complaining to the powers
that guaranteed its punctual discharge, and which, if so complained of
at the Congress of Vienna, there is no reason to doubt would have been
redressed: and 3rd, the voice of the French nation, which he, according
to his own statement, had but heard and obeyed. But the state of public
feeling in France could not be effectually misrepresented now: and the
answer that met him from every quarter was one and the same--namely,
that he had ascended the throne of Louis in consequence of the treason
of the army, and the intrigues of a faction, in direct opposition to the
wishes of almost all the upper classes of society throughout France,
and, as regarded the mass of the nation, amidst profound indifference.
Meanwhile the royalists at home had failed in all their endeavours to
prevent his authority from being recognised all over France. The Duke
d'Angouleme was soon surrounded by the superior numbers of General
Gilly, and capitulated--on condition of being permitted to disband his
followers, and embark at Cette for Spain--a convention which Napoleon
did not hesitate to ratify. The Duchess of Angouleme, daughter of Louis
XVI., displayed at Bourdeaux such heroism as drew from Napoleon himself
the sarcastic eulogy, "She is the only man of her race;" but in spite of
the loyalty of the inhabitants all her efforts were vain. The garrison
was strong; they had caught the general flame; and the Princess was at
length compelled to take refuge in an English frigate. The Duke of Berri
repaired, on the first alarm, to La Vendee: but the regular troops in
that faithful province were, thanks to the previous care of King Louis's
war-minister, so numerous and so well posted, that this effort failed
also, and the Duke escaped to England. Before March had ended, the
tricolor flag was displayed on every tower of France.
Having discovered that there was no chance--if indeed he had ever
contemplated one--of persuading the Emperor of Austria to restore his
wife and son to him, Napoleon, ere he had been many days at the
Tuileries, set on foot a scheme for carrying them off from Vienna, by a
mixture of stratagem and force. There were French people in the suite of
Maria Louisa who easily embarked in this plot; and forged passports,
relays of horses, and all other appliances had been so well provided,
that but for a single individual, who betrayed the design, there seems
to have been a considerable probability of its success. On discovering
this affair the Emperor of Austria dismissed the French attendants of
his daughter, and caused her to discontinue the use of the arms and
liveries of Napoleon, which she had hitherto retained--nay, even the
imperial title itself, resuming those of her own family, and original
rank as archduchess. This procedure could not be concealed at Paris, and
completed the conviction of all men, that there was no hope whatever of
avoiding another European war; and almost at the same time a rash
expedition of Murat, which, if successful, might have materially
influenced the conduct of Austria, reached its end.
Napoleon, when at St. Helena, always persisted in denying any
participation in this design of his brother-in-law; but, however this
may have been, it is certain that much intercourse subsisted, during his
stay at Elba, between the Queen of Naples and the female branches of the
family at Porto Ferraio; nor can anyone doubt either that Murat had
received some pretty distinct intimation of Napoleon's intended descent
in France--or that he ventured on his movement in the confidence that
this and the Emperor's would lend to each other much moral support--or
that, if Joachim had prospered, Napoleon would have considered what he
did as the best service that could have been rendered to himself.
Among the subjects which, prior to Buonaparte's reappearance, occupied
the Congress of Vienna, one of the chief was the conduct of Murat during
the campaign of 1814. Talleyrand charged him with having, throughout,
been a traitor to the cause of the Allies; and exhibited a series of
intercepted letters, from him to Napoleon, in proof of this allegation.
The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, considered these documents as
proving no more than that Murat had reluctantly lifted his banner
against the author of his fortunes. Talleyrand had always hated Murat
and despised him--(the father of the King of Naples had originally been
steward in the household of the Perigords)--and persisted in urging on
the Congress the danger of suffering a sovereign of Buonaparte's family
and creation to sit on the throne which belonged of right to the King of
the Sicilies. The affair was still under discussion, to the mortal
annoyance of the person whose interests were at stake, when Napoleon
landed at Cannes. Murat resolved to rival his brother's daring; and,
without further pause, marched, at the head of 50,000 men, to Rome, from
which the Pope and cardinals fled precipitately at his approach. The
Neapolitans then advanced into the North of Italy, scattering
proclamations by which Joachim invited all true Italians to rally round
him, and assist in the erection of their country into one free and
independent state, with him at its head. The Austrian commander in
Lombardy forthwith put his troops in motion to meet Murat. The rencontre
took place at Occhiobello. The Neapolitans fled in confusion almost at
the sight of the enemy; and Murat, unable to rally them, sought personal
safety in a fishing vessel, which landed him near Toulon, about the end
of May. Napoleon was in vain entreated to receive him at Paris. He
refused, asking, with bitter scorn--if the war between France and
Naples, which subsisted in 1814, had ever been terminated by treaty?
Murat lingered for some time in obscurity near Toulon; and, relanding on
the coast of Naples after the King of the Two Sicilies had been
re-established on that throne, in the vain hope of exciting an
insurrection and recovering what he had lost, was seized, tried, and
executed. This vain, but high-spirited, man, met his fate with heroic
fortitude; and Napoleon, at St. Helena, often said that the fortune of
the world might have been changed, had there been a Murat to head the
French cavalry at Waterloo.
The result of this rash expedition enabled Austria to concentrate all
her Italian forces also for the meditated re-invasion of France. The
Spanish army began to muster towards the passes of the Pyrenees: the
Russians, Swedes, and Danes were already advancing from the north: the
main armies of Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhenish princes were rapidly
consolidating themselves along the Upper Rhine. Blucher was once more in
command of the Prussians, in the Netherlands; and Wellington,
commanding in chief the British, Hanoverians, and Belgians, had also
established his headquarters at Brussels by the end of May. Every hour
the clouds were thickening apace, and it became evident, that, if
Napoleon remained much longer in Paris, the war would burst
simultaneously on every frontier of his empire.
He had no intention to abide at home the onset of his enemies; but the
situation of civil affairs was such as to embarrass him, in the prospect
of departure, with difficulties which, in former days, were not used to
perplex the opening of his campaigns.
Hard indeed was his task from the beginning--to conciliate to himself
heartily the political faction who detested, and had assisted in
overthrowing the government of the Bourbons, and this without chilling
the attachment of the military, who despised these coadjutors, both as
theorists and as civilians, and had welcomed Napoleon only as the
certain harbinger of war, revenge, and plunder. How little his soldiery
were disposed to consider him as owing anything to a civil revolution,
appeared almost from the commencement of his march from Cannes. It was
observed that these haughty bands moved on in contemptuous silence
whenever the populace cheered his approach, and shouted _Vive
l'Empereur_ only when there were no _pequin_[71] voices to mingle in the
clamour. Every act of Napoleon after he reached Paris, that was meant to
conciliate the common people of the capital, was the theme of angry
comment among these martial circles. Such measures as he adopted in
deference to the prejudices of the old republican party, were heard of
with equal contempt. The pacific language of his first proclamations was
considered as a fair stratagem--and no more. To them the man was nothing
but as the type of the system: they desired to hear of nothing in France
but the great Caesar, and the legions to whom he owed his greatness, and
who had the same right to a new career of battles, as he to his Imperial
crown, at once the prize of past, and the pledge of future victories.
With the views of these spirits, eager for blood and plunder, and
scornful of all liberty but the licence of the camp, Napoleon was
engaged in the endeavour to reconcile the principles and prejudices of
men who had assisted in rebuilding his throne, only because they put
faith in the assertions of himself and his friends, that he had
thoroughly repented of the despotic system on which he had formerly
ruled France--that ten months of exile and reflection had convinced him
how much better it was to be the first citizen of a free state, than the
undisputed tyrant of half the world--in a word, that his only remaining
ambition was to atone for the violence of his first reign by the
mildness of his second. As a first step to fasten the goodwill of these
easy believers, he, immediately on arriving in Paris, proclaimed the
freedom of the press; but he soon repented of this concession. In spite
of all the watchfulness, and all the briberies of his police, he could
never bend to his own service the whole of this power. The pure
republicans--even the pure royalists--continued to have their organs;
and the daily appeals of either to the reason and the passions of a
people so long strange to the exercise of such influence, otherwise than
in subservience to the government of the time, whatever that might be,
produced such effects, that, almost from the time in which he bestowed
the boon, he was occupied with devising pretexts for its recall. He ere
long caused, perhaps, more resentment by some efforts to thwart the
conduct of the press, than would have resulted from the absolute
prolongation of its slavery. Some even of the decrees of Lyons were hard
to be reconciled with the professions of one who disclaimed any wish to
interfere with the sacred right of the nation to frame its constitution
for itself. But in almost every act of his government after he reached
Paris, he furnished additional evidence how imperfectly his mind had
divested itself of the ancient maxims. Even the edict, emancipating the
press from all control, was an assumption on his part of the complete
power of legislation. The same might be said of another decree,
abolishing negro slavery and the slave trade, which he published shortly
after: but this second measure exposed him to other comments. Who could
seriously believe that at that moment of tumult, ere France was even in
semblance entirely his, and while all Europe was openly arming against
him, he had leisure for the affairs of the negroes? This display of
philanthropy was set down universally for a stage-trick; and men
quickened their eyes, lest such unsubstantial shows in the distant
horizon might be designed to withdraw their attention from the
foreground.
The great assemblage of _Champ-de-Mai_ had been originally announced for
the 10th of May; and its principal business as the formation of a new
constitution. The meeting did not take place so early, and the task of
proposing a constitutional scheme for its consideration, proved far more
difficult than the Emperor had contemplated. He had the assistance, in
this labour, of Carnot and Sieyes, whose names would have carried great
weight with the republican party--had not both of these old jacobins and
regicides accepted, on entering the Emperor's service, high rank in his
peerage--a proceeding in direct violation of all the professions of
their lives. He was further favoured with the aid of his brother Lucien,
who, in spite of all previous misunderstandings, returned on this
occasion to Paris; influenced, probably, by the same egregious vanity
which made him fancy himself a poet, and hoping, under existing
circumstances, to impress Napoleon with such a sense of his value as
might secure him henceforth a commanding influence in the government of
France. The Abbe Sieyes, and Lucien also, had had some experience ere
now of Napoleon in the character of a constitution-maker. He was no
longer so powerful as he had been when they formerly toiled together
upon such a task: disputes arose; and the Emperor, to cut these short,
and give a decisive proof of his regard for freedom of debate, soon
broke up the discussion, retired from the Tuileries to the small palace
called the Elysee, and there drew up the scheme which pleased himself,
and which was forthwith published under the title of "Act Additional to
the Constitutions of the Empire."
This title gave great offence, because it seemed to recognise many
anterior enactments, wholly irreconcilable with the tenor of the
document itself; and the mode of its promulgation furnished even more
serious ground of objection. This constitution was, on the face of it,
not a compact between the prince and the people, but the record of boons
conceded by the former to the latter. In a word, all they that had
condemned Louis XVIII. for his royal _charter_, were compelled to
acknowledge that their own imperial champion of freedom was beginning
his new career by a precisely similar display of presumption.
The substance of the "additional act" disappointed all those who
hankered after the formal exposition of first principles; but it must be
allowed that its provisions seem to include whatever is needful for the
arrangement of a free representative constitution; hereditary monarchy;
a hereditary peerage; a house of representatives, chosen by the people,
at least once within every five years; yearly taxes, levied only by the
whole legislature; responsible ministers; irremovable judges; and, in
all criminal cases whatever, the trial by jury. The act, however, was
published; the electoral colleges accepted of it, as they had done of
all its predecessors; and it by degrees came out that the business of
the _Champ-de-Mai_ was to be--not even the discussion of the imperial
scheme, but only to swear submission to its regulations, and witness a
solemn distribution of eagles to those haughty bands who acknowledge no
law but that of the sword.
This promised assemblage was preceded by one of the rabble of Paris,
convoked in front of the Tuileries on the 17th of May, and there feasted
and harangued by Napoleon--a condescension which excited lively
displeasure among his soldiery. He himself looked and spoke as one
thoroughly ashamed of what he had done and was doing. It had been his
desire to stimulate among these people something of the old zeal of the
revolutionary period, in case Paris should be once more threatened by a
foreign enemy; but he had the double mortification to find that the army
considered their touch as contamination, and that among themselves the
name of Louis was almost as popular as his own. Even the _Dames des
halles_, so conspicuous in the revolutionary tumults, screamed royalist
ditties in his ear as they drank his wine; and the only hearty cheers
were those of the day-labourers, who had profited by his resumption of
some great public works suspended by the King's government.
The _Champ-de-Mai_ itself, which, despite its name, fell on the 1st of
June, turned out hardly a more successful exhibition. Napoleon, his
brothers, and the great civil functionaries, appeared in theatric
dresses, in the midst of an enormous amphitheatre, where the deputies,
sent from the departments to swear allegiance to the Emperor and the
"additional act," were almost lost in the military among whom the eagles
were to be distributed. The enthusiasm was confined to these. The same
ominous silence which prevailed at the coronation of 1804 was preserved
among the people. The sun shone bright, and the roar of cannon filled
every pause of the martial music. It was a brilliant spectacle; but
Napoleon retired from it in visible dejection.
Three days after, the two houses met; and while that of the peers,
composed of persons who all owed their rank, and most of them much
besides, to Napoleon, showed every disposition to regulate their conduct
by his pleasure, there appeared from the beginning a marked spirit of
independence in a considerable proportion of the representative body.
The Emperor's address to both was moderate and manly. He requested their
support in the war which circumstances had rendered unavoidable, and
professed his desire that they should consider the "additional act" and
all other subjects of national interest, and suggest whatever
alterations might appear to them improvements. Some debates, by no means
gratifying to Napoleon, ensued; but he had no leisure for witnessing
much of their proceedings. It was now needful that he should appear once
more in his own element.
[Footnote 71: By this contemptuous name his soldiery designated all who
had never borne arms. The word dropt once from the lips of one of
Napoleon's marshals in the hearing of Talleyrand, who asked its meaning.
"Nous nommons _pequin_," answered the rude soldier, "tout ce qui n'est
pas militaire."--"Ah!" said the cool Talleyrand--"comme nous nommons
_militaire_ tout ce qui n'est pas civil."]