BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCXC. APRIL, 1848. VOL. LXIII.
CONTENTS.
FALL OF THE THRONE OF THE BARRICADES, 393
A GERMAN DITTY, 419
TWO SONNETS, 420
MY ROUTE INTO CANADA, 425
THE CONQUEST OF NAPLES, 436
TRAVELLING IN TAFFYLAND, 455
LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD HARDWICKE, 463
HOW WE GOT POSSESSION OF THE TUILLERIES, 484
THE CAXTONS: A FAMILY PICTURE. Part I., 513
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCXC. APRIL, 1848. VOL. LXIII.
FALL OF THE THRONE OF THE BARRICADES.
“Deus patiens quia Æternus.”—ST AUGUSTIN.
Eighteen years ago, when the throne of Charles X. was overturned amidst
the universal exultation of the liberal party in this country, we
ventured, amidst the general transports, to arraign the policy and
condemn the morality of the change. We pleaded strongly, in several
articles,[1] that that great event foreboded nothing but a long series
of calamities to France and to Europe; that liberty had been rendered
impossible in a country which, casting aside all the bonds of religion
and loyalty, had left no other foundation for government but force; and
that the external peace of the Continent would be put in imminent peril
by an ardent military population, heated by the successful issue of one
great revolt, placed in the midst of monarchies in which the feudal
institutions and chivalrous feelings were still in ascendency. We
doubted the stability of a government founded on the success of one
well-organised urban insurrection: we distrusted the fidelity of men who
had begun their career by treachery and treason. Nominally the
aggressor, we concluded that Charles X. was really on the defensive; he
attempted a _coup d’état_, because government in any other way had
become impossible. We were told in reply, that these were antiquated and
exploded ideas; that the revolution was necessary to save the liberties
of France from destruction; that a new era had opened upon mankind with
the fire of the Barricades; that loyalty was no longer required when the
interest of mankind to be well governed was generally felt; and that a
throne surrounded by republican institutions was the best form of
government, and the only one in which the monarchical principle could
any longer be tolerated in the enlightened states of modern Europe.
With how much vehemence these principles were maintained by the whole
whig and liberal party in Great Britain, need be told to none who
recollect the rise of the dynasty of the Barricades in the year 1830. To
those who do not, ample evidence of the general delusion, and of the
perseverance with which it was combated, will be found in the pages of
this Journal for 1831 and 1832. Time has rolled on, and brought its
wonted changes on its wings. More quickly than we anticipated, the
perilous nature of the convulsion which had proved victorious was
demonstrated—more clearly than we ventured to predict, was the necessity
of Prince Polignac’s ordinances demonstrated. It soon became apparent
that France could be governed only by force.
The government of Louis Philippe was a continual denial of its origin—an
incessant effort to crush the spirit which had raised it. The repeated
and sanguinary disorders in Paris; the two dreadful insurrections in
Lyons; the awful drowning of the revolt of the cloister of St Méry in
blood; demonstrated, before two years had elapsed, that the government
had felt the necessity of extinguishing the visionary ideas which had
been evoked, as the means of elevating itself into power. More than once
it stood on the edge of the abyss; and it was saved only by the vigour
of the sovereign, and the newly awakened terrors of the holders of
property, which prevented them from openly coalescing with the
determined republicans, who aimed at overturning all the institutions of
society, and realising in the nineteenth century the visions of
Robespierre and Babœuf in the eighteenth. In the course of this
protracted struggle, the new government felt daily more and more the
necessity of resting their authority on force, and detaching it from the
anarchical doctrines, amidst the triumphs of which it had taken its
rise. Paris was declared in a state of siege; the ordinances of Polignac
were reenacted with additional rigour; the military establishment of the
country was doubled; its expenditure raised from nine hundred millions
to fifteen hundred millions francs; an incessant and persevering war
waged with the democratic press; and Paris surrounded by a chain of
forts, which effectually prevented any other will from governing France
but that of the military who were in possession of their bastions. Such
was the result to the cause of freedom in France of the triumph of the
Barricades.
But in eighteen years an entirely new generation rises to the active
direction of affairs. In 1848, the personal experience, the well-founded
fears, the sights of woe which had retained the strength of France round
the standards of the Barricades, were forgotten. The fearful contests
with anarchy by which the first years of the reign of Louis Philippe had
been marked, had passed into the page of history, that is, were become
familiar to a tenth part only of the active population. To those who did
learn it from this limited source, it was known chiefly from the volumes
of M. Louis Blanc, who, in his “Ten years of the reign of Louis
Philippe,” painted that monarch in no other light but as one of the most
deceitful and sanguinary tyrants who ever disgraced humanity. Thus the
lessons of experience were lost to the vast majority of the active
citizens. The necessity of keeping at peace, which Louis Philippe so
strongly felt, and so energetically asserted, became in the course of
years an insupportable restraint upon a people fraught with
revolutionary ideas, and heated by the glowing recollections of the
Empire. A nation containing six millions of separate landed
proprietors,[2] the great majority of whom were at the plough, and not
possessed of six pounds a-year in the world, necessarily chafes against
any power which imposes the restraints of order and peace on the
appetite for plunder and the lust of conquest. This was the true secret
of the fall of the dynasties of the Restoration and the Barricades. They
fell because they kept the nation at peace with its neighbours, and at
peace with itself,—because they terminated the dream of foreign
conquest, and checked the visions of internal utopia; because they did
not, like Napoleon, open the career of arms to every man in the country
capable of carrying a musket; or, like Robespierre, pursue the supposed
advantage of the working classes by the destruction of every interest
above them in society. Had either Charles X. or Louis Philippe been
foreign conquerors, and the state of Europe had permitted of their
waging war with success, they would have lived and died on the throne of
France, and left an honoured crown to their successors. There never were
monarchs who mowed down the population and wasted the resources of
France like Napoleon and Louis XIV.; but as long as they were
successful, and kept open the career of elevation to the people, they
commanded their universal attachment. It was when they grew unfortunate,
and could call them only to discharge the mournful duties of adversity,
that they became the objects of universal execration. The revolution has
ever been true to its polar star, viz.—worldly success.
In making these observations, we must guard against being misunderstood.
We do not assert that the _present_ leaders of the Revolution desire
foreign war, or are insincere in the pacific professions which they have
put forth in their public proclamations. We have no doubt that “Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity,” is what they really desire; and that with
England in particular they are sincerely desirous to remain, at present
at least, on terms of amity. The early promoters of the Revolution of
1789—Siêyes, Bailly, Mirabeau, and Lafayette—were equally loud and
probably sincere in their pacific protestations at the outset of the
first convulsion. What we assert is another proposition entirely
corroborated by past history, and scarcely less important in its present
application—viz., that the members of the existing Revolutionary
Government are placed in a false position; that they have been elevated
to power by the force of passion, and the spread of principles
inconsistent with the existence of society; that if they continue to fan
them, they will ruin their country, if they attempt to coerce them, they
will be destroyed themselves. This is the constant and dreadful
alternative in which a Revolutionary Government is placed, and which has
so uniformly led in past history to what is called a departure from the
principles of freedom by its successful leaders. It was this which
brought Lafayette into such discredit in Paris, that his life was saved
only by his fortunate confinement in an Austrian dungeon: it was this
which rendered Mirabeau in the end a royalist, and for ever ruined him
in popular favour: it was this which made Robespierre strive to restore
the sway of natural religion in the infidel metropolis: it was this
which gave Napoleon such a horror of the metaphysical “Ideologues,” who,
according to him, had ruined France, and rendered him the resolute and
unbending opponent of the Revolution. But even Napoleon’s iron arm was
unequal to the task of arresting the fiery coursers of democracy: he
only succeeded in maintaining internal tranquillity by giving them a
_foreign_ direction. He turned them not against the Tuileries, but
against the Kremlin; he preserved peace in France only by waging war in
Europe. A “Napoleon of Peace” will never succeed in restraining the
Revolution.
Observe the pledges with which the Provisional Government are commencing
their career. They are, that the state is to provide employment for all
who cannot procure it from private individuals; that an ample
remuneration is to be secured to labour; that the right of combination
to raise wages is to be protected by law; that the House of Peers is to
be abolished, as well as all titles of honour, the bearing of which is
to be absolutely prohibited; that a noble career to all Frenchmen is to
be opened _in the army_; the national representation is to be placed on
the most democratic basis of a National Assembly, elected by _nine
millions_ of electors; all burdens on subsistence are to be abolished;
unlimited circulation is to be provided for newspapers and the extension
of knowledge; but _the taxes_, in the mean time at least, are to undergo
_no diminution_. These promises and pledges sufficiently demonstrate
what interest in the state has _now_ got the ascendency. It is the
interest, or rather _supposed_ interest, of _labour_, in opposition to
that of capital—of numbers against property.
The Revolution that has taken place is a communist or _socialist_
triumph; the chiefs who have been installed in power are the leaders of
the party who think that the grand evil of civilisation is the
encroachment of the profit of capital on the wages of labour, and that
the only effectual remedy for them is to be found in the forcible
diminution of the former and extension of the latter.
The doctrine of this party in France has long been, that Robespierre
perished because he did not venture to pronounce the word, _agrarian
law_. It would be to little purpose to pronounce that word now, when the
Republic has got nearly six millions of separate proprietors, most of
them not worth six pounds a-year each. There is little but sturdy
resistance to be got by attempting to spoliate this immense and indigent
body, as they have spoliated the old territorial proprietors. But the
capitalists and shopkeepers of towns stand in a different situation. In
their hands, since the fall of Napoleon, very considerable wealth has
accumulated. The peace and order maintained by the governments of the
Restoration and the Barricades, though fatal to themselves, has been
eminently favourable to the growth of bourgeois opulence. It is against
_that_ opulence that the recent Revolution was directed. The
shopkeepers, deluded to their own destruction, began the insurrection:
they surrounded and compelled the abandonment of the Tuileries. All
successful convulsions are headed, in the first instance at least, by a
portion of the higher or middle ranks. But they were soon passed by the
rabble who followed their armed columns; and when the tumultuous mob
broke into the Chamber of Deputies, fired at the picture of Louis
Philippe, and pointed their muskets at the head of the Duchess of
Orleans, it was too late to talk of Thiers and Odillon Barrot; the cause
of reform was already passed by that of Revolution; and nothing could
serve the victorious and highly excited multitude, but the abolition of
monarchy, peers, and titles of honour, and the vesting of government in
the hands of dreamers on equality, and leaders of Trades’ Unions in
France.
Let the National Guard, who brought about the Revolution, and seduced or
overcame the loyalty of the troops of the line, explain, if they can,
the benefit _they_ are likely to derive from this triumph of Socialism
over Bourgeoisie, of labour over capital, of numbers over property. The
Revolution was the work of their hands, and they must reap its fruits,
_as unquestionably they will bear its responsibility_. It is of more
importance for us in this country to inquire how the promises made by
government, and the expectations formed by the people, are to be
realised in the present social and political state of France. Already,
before the _Io Pæans_ upon the fall of the Orleans dynasty have ceased,
the difficulties of the new government in this respect have proclaimed
themselves. Columns of _ten and fifteen_ thousand workmen daily wait on
the administration to insist on the immediate recognition of the rights
of labour: their demands were promptly acceded to by the decree of 3d
March, which fixes the hours of labour in Paris at _ten_ hours a-day,
_and in the provinces at eleven_ hours. They were formerly eleven hours
in Paris and twelve in the provinces. This is quite intelligible: it is
reasonable that the Civil Prætorian Guards of the capital should work
less than the serfs of the provinces. Cutting off an hour’s labour over
a whole country would be deemed a pretty serious matter in
“l’industrieuse Angleterre:” but on the other side of the Channel, we
suppose, it is a mere bagatelle, important chiefly as showing from what
quarter the wind sets. Other prognostics of coming events are already
visible. Monster meetings of operatives and workmen in and around Paris
continue to be held in the Champs de Mars, to take the interests and
rights of labour into consideration: it is probable that they will still
further reduce the hours of toil, and proportionately raise its wages.
Already the stone-cutters have insisted on a minimum of pay and maximum
of work, and got it. Eight hours a-day, and ten sous an hour, is their
ultimatum. The journalists early clamoured for the immediate removal of
all duties affecting them. They succeeded in shaking off their burdens;
other classes will not be slow in following their example. Meanwhile
government is burdened, as in the worst days of the first Revolution,
with the maintenance of an immense body of citizens with arms in their
hands, and very little bread to put into their mouths. How to feed this
immense body, with resources continually failing, from the terrors of
capital, the flight of the English from Paris, and the diminished
expenditure of all the wealthier classes, would, according to the former
maxims of government, have been deemed a matter of no small difficulty.
But we suppose the regenerators of society have discovered some method
of arriving, with railway speed, at public opulence amidst private
suffering.
The melancholy progress of the first Revolution has naturally made
numbers of persons, not intimately acquainted with its events,
apprehensive of the immediate return of the Reign of Terror and the
restoration of the guillotine into its terrible and irresistible
sovereignty in France. Without disputing that there is much danger in
the present excited and disjointed state of the population of that
country, there are several reasons which induce us to believe that such
an event is not very probable, at least in the _first instance_, and
that it is from a different quarter that the real danger that now
threatens France is, in the outset at least, to be apprehended.
In the first place, although the Reign of Terror is over, and few indeed
of the actual witnesses are still in existence, yet the recollection of
it will never pass away: it has affixed a stain to the cause of
revolution which will never be effaced, but which its subsequent leaders
are most anxious to be freed from. Its numerous tragic scenes—its
frightful atrocity—its heroic suffering, have indelibly sunk into the
minds of men. To the end of the world, they will interest and melt every
succeeding age. The young will ever find them the most engrossing and
attractive theme,—the middle-aged, the most important subject of
reflection,—the old, the most delightful means of renewing the emotions
of youth. History is never weary of recording its bloody
catastrophes,—romance has already arrayed them with the colours of
poetry,—the drama will ere long seize upon them as the finest subjects
that human events have ever furnished for the awakening of tragic
emotion. They will be as immortal in story as the heroes of the Iliad,
the woes of the Atrides, the catastrophe of Œdipus, the death of Queen
Mary. So strongly have these fascinating tragedies riveted the attention
of mankind, that nothing has ever created so powerful a moral barrier
against the encroachments of democracy. The royal, like the Christian
martyrs, have lighted a fire which, by the grace of God, will never be
extinguished. So strongly are the popular leaders in every country
impressed with the moral effects of these catastrophes, that their first
efforts are always now directed to clear every successive convulsion of
their damning influence. Guizot and Lafayette, at the hazard of their
lives, in December 1830, saved Prince Polignac and M. Peyronnet from the
guillotine; and the first act of the Provisional Government of France in
1848, to their honour be it said, was to proclaim the abolition of the
punishment of death for political offences, in order to save, as they
intended, M. Guizot himself.
In the next place, the bloodshed and confiscation of the first
Revolution have, as subsequent writers have repeatedly demonstrated, so
completely extinguished the elements of national resistance in France,
that the dangers which threatened its progress and ensanguined its steps
no longer exist. It was no easy matter to overturn the monarchy and
church of old France. It was interwoven with the noblest, because the
most disinterested feelings of our nature,—it touched the chords of
religion and loyalty,—it was supported by historic names, and the lustre
of ancient descent,—it rested on the strongest and most dignified
attachments of modern times. The overthrow of such a fabric, like the
destruction of the monarchy of Great Britain at this time, could not be
effected but by the shedding of torrents of blood. Despite the
irresolution of the king, the defection of the army, the conquest of the
capital, and the emigration of the noblesse, accordingly, a most
desperate resistance arose in the provinces; and the revolution was
consolidated only by the _mitrillades_ of Lyons and Toulon, the
_noyades_ of the Loire, the proscriptions of the Convention, the blood
of La Vendée. France was not then enslaved by its capital. But now these
elements of resistance to the government of the dominant multitude at
Paris no longer exist. The nobles have been destroyed and their estates
confiscated; the clergy are reduced to humble stipendiaries, not
superior in station or influence to village schoolmasters; the
corporations of towns are dissolved; the house of peers has degenerated
into a body of well-dressed and titled employés. Six millions of
separate landed proprietors, without leaders, wealth, information, or
influence, have seized upon and now cultivate the soil of France. Power
is, over the whole realm, synonymous with office. Every appointment in
the kingdom flows from Paris. In these circumstances, how is it possible
that resistance to the decrees of the sovereign power, in possession of
the armed force of the capital, the treasury, the telegraph, and the
post-office, can arise in France elsewhere than in the capital? Civil
war, therefore, on an extended scale over the country, is improbable;
and the victorious leaders of the Revolution, delivered from immediate
apprehension, save in their own metropolis, of domestic danger, have no
motive for shocking the feelings of mankind, and endangering their
relations with foreign powers, by needless and unnecessary deeds of
cruelty. It was during the struggle with the patricians that the
proscriptions of Sylla and Marius deluged Italy with blood. After they
were destroyed, by mutual slaughter and the denunciations of the
Triumvirate, though there was often the greatest possible tyranny and
oppression under the emperors, there was none of the wholesale
destruction of life which disgraced the republic, when the rival
factions fronted each other in yet undiminished strength.
Although, however, for these reasons, we do not anticipate, at least _at
present_, those sanguinary proscriptions which have for ever rendered
infamous the first Revolution, yet we fear there is reason to apprehend
changes not less destructive in their tendency, misery still more
widespread in its effects, destined, perhaps, to terminate at last in
bloodshed not less universal. Men have discovered that they are not mere
beasts of prey: they cannot live on flesh and blood. But they have
learned also that they can live very well on capital and property: and
it is against these, in consequence, that the present Revolution will be
directed. They will not be openly assailed: direct confiscations of
possessions have fallen almost as much into disrepute as the shedding
torrents of blood on the scaffold. The thing will be done more covertly,
but not the less effectually. They will take a leaf out of the former
private lives of the Italians, and the recent public history of Great
Britain. We have shown them that, under cover of a cry for the
emancipation of slaves, property to the amount of one hundred and twenty
millions can be quietly and securely destroyed in the colonies; that,
veiled under the disguise of placing the currency on a secure basis, a
third can be added to all the debts, and as much taken from the
remuneration of every species of industry, throughout the country. These
are great discoveries, they are the glory of modern civilisation: they
have secured the support of the whole liberal party in Great Britain.
The _objects_ of the French Revolutionists are wholly different, but the
mode of proceeding will be the same. The stiletto and the poison bowl
have gone out of fashion: they are discarded as the rude invention of a
barbarous age. The civilised Italians have taught us how to do the
thing. Slow and unseen poison is the real secret; there are Lucretia
Borgias in the political not less than the physical world. The great
thing is to secure the support of the masses by loud professions of
philanthropy, and the warmest expressions of an interest in the
improvement of mankind; and having roused them to action, and paralysed
the defenders of the existing order of things by these means, then to
turn the united force of the nation to their own purposes, and the
placing of the whole wealth of the state at their disposal. Thus the
ends of Revolution are gained without its leaders being disgraced: the
substantial advantages of a transfer of property are enjoyed without a
moral reaction being raised up against it. Fortunes are made by some,
without a direct spoliation of others being perceived: multitudes are
involved in misery, but then they do not know to what cause their
distresses are owing, nor is any peculiar obloquy brought upon the real
authors of the public calamities.
We do not say that the present Provisional Government of France are
actuated by these motives, any more than we say that our negro
emancipators or bullionists and free-traders meant, in pursuing the
system which they have adopted, to occasion the wholesale and ruinous
destruction of property which their measures have occasioned. We
consider both the one and the other as _political fanatics_; men
inaccessible to reason, insensible to experience; who pursue certain
visionary theories of their own, wholly regardless of the devastation
they produce in society, or the misery they occasion in whole classes of
the state. “Perish the colonies,” said Robespierre, “rather than one
iota of principle be abandoned.” That is the essence of political
fanaticism; it rages at present with equal violence on both sides of the
Channel. The present Provisional Government of France are some of them
able and eloquent—all of them, we believe, well-meaning and sincere men.
But they set out with discarding the lessons of experience; their
principle is an entire negation of all former systems of government.
They think a new era has opened in human affairs: that the first
Revolution has destroyed the former method of directing mankind, and the
present has ushered in the novel one. They see no bounds to the spread
of human felicity, by the adoption of a social system different from any
which has yet obtained among men. They have adopted the ideas of
Robespierre without his blood,—the visions of Rousseau without his
profligacy.
The writings of Lamartine and Louis Blanc clearly reveal these
principles, particularly the “Histoire des Girondins” of the former, and
the “Dix Ans de l’Histoire de Louis Philippe” of the latter. Lamartine
says the Girondists fell because they did not, on the 10th August 1792,
when the throne was overturned, instantly proclaim a republic, and go
frankly and sincerely into the democratic system. If he himself falls,
it will not be from a repetition of the error; he has done what they
left undone. We shall see the result. Experience will prove whether, by
discarding all former institutions, we have cast off at the same time
the slough of corruption which has descended to all from our first
parents. We shall see whether the effects of the fall can be shaken off
by changing the institutions of society; whether the devil cannot find
as many agents among the Socialists as the Jacobins; whether he cannot
mount on the shoulders of Lamartine and Arago as well as he did on those
of Robespierre and Marat. In the meantime, while we are the spectators
of this great experiment, we request the attention of our readers to the
following interesting particulars regarding the acts of the new
government, the professions they have made, the expectations which are
formed of them.
One of the most popular journals of the working classes of Paris—that
is, the present rulers of France—the _Democratie Pacifique_, has adopted
the following mottoes:—
“The Revolution of 1789 has destroyed the old Regime; that of 1848
should establish the new one.”
“Social reform is the end, as Republic is the means; _all the
Socialists are Republicans, all the Republicans are Socialists_.”[3]
The methods by which the plans of the Socialists are to be worked out,
are in the same journal declared to be as follows:—
“PROGRAMME OF THE PEOPLE.
“A man with a heart,—a man greatly loved by the working classes, has
lent his hand to the formation of a programme dictated by the popular
will. The ideas on which it rests, treated as utopian yesterday, have
no need to be discussed to-day. The last Revolution is an explosion of
light which has dissipated the darkness. The Socialist ideas railed at
yesterday, accepted to-day, will be realised to-morrow. Its principles
are,—
“I. _The rights of labour._—It is the duty of the state to furnish
employment, and if necessary a _minimum_ of wages, to all the members
of society whom private industry does not employ.
“II. _House of refuge_ for industry.
“III. Despotism must be for ever disarmed by the transformation of the
army into _industrial regiments_, (en regiments industriels,) suited
alike to the defence of the territory and the execution of the great
works of the Republic.
“IV. _Public education, equal_, gratuitous, and obligatory upon all.
“V. Savings’ banks (caisses d’épargne) which keep capital dead, shall
be _vivified by labour_: the people who produce all riches can afford
to be their own bankers.
“VI. A universal reform of _law courts_, juries every where.
“VII. Absolute _freedom of communications of thought_.
“VIII. A _progressive scale of taxation_.
“IX. A progressional _tax on machinery_ employed in industry.
“X. An effectual guarantee for a _fair division of profits_ between
the capitalists and the workmen.
“XI. A _tax on luxury_.
“XII. _Universal suffrage._
“XIII. A _national assembly_.
“XIV. _Annual elections by all._
“Vive la Republique!
Gardons nos armes!”[4]
To carry out these principles, they propose a general centralisation of
all undertakings in the hands of government, to be brought under the
direct control of a simple majority of universal suffrage electors. In
the same journal we find the following proposals:—
“ABSORPTION OF RAILWAYS BY THE STATE.
“Let us reproduce to-day, with the certainty of being heard by the
country, the wishes which the _Democratie Pacifique_ has announced
every morning since its origin, seventeen years ago.
“I. All railways, roads, canals, and public ways, by which the life of
France circulates, to be _absorbed by the state_.
“II. The state should undertake all stage-coaches, carriers, waggons,
and means of conveyance or transport, of every description.
“III. All joint-stock banks should be absorbed by the state—(A l’état
les banques confédérées.)
“IV. All insurance companies, mines, and salt-works, to be undertaken
by the state.
“V. No more forestalling, accumulating, regrating, or _anarchical
competition_. Feudal industry is pierced to the heart; let us not
allow it to raise itself from the dust.”[5]
Such are the proposals to be found in a single journal which represents
the ideas that are now fermenting in the mind of France.
These propositions will probably “donnent à penser,” as the French say,
to most of our readers. Some of them will perhaps be of opinion that our
lively neighbours are getting on at railway speed in the regeneration of
society. We recommend their projects to the consideration of the
numerous holders of French railway and other stock, in the British
islands. They will doubtless get good round sums for their claims of
damages against the French government, when it has _absorbed_ all the
joint-stock companies of the country!—the more so when it is
recollected, 1st, That the damages will be assessed by juries elected by
universal suffrage. 2d, That they will be paid by a government appointed
by an assembly elected in the same way. We are not surprised, when such
ideas are afloat in the ruling and irresistible workmen of Paris, who
have just overturned Louis Philippe, at the head of one hundred thousand
men, that the French funds have fallen _thirty-five per cent_ in these
few days, and railway and other stock in a still greater proportion. The
Paris 3 _per cents_ are now (March 18) at 50; the 5 per cents at 72!
Nor let it be said these ideas are the mere dreams of enthusiasts, which
never can be carried into practice by any government. These enthusiasts
are now the ruling power in the state; their doctrines are those which
will quickly be carried into execution by the liberal and enlightened
masses, invested by universal suffrage with supreme dominion in the
Republic. Most assuredly they will carry their ideas into execution: the
seed which the liberal writers of France have been sowing for the last
thirty years, will bring forth its appropriate fruits. What power is to
prevent the adoption of these popular and highly lauded “improvements,”
after the government of Louis Philippe and Guizot has been overturned by
their announcement? These persons stood as the barrier between France
and the “social revolution” with which it was menaced: when they were
destroyed, all means of _resisting_ it are at an end, and the friends of
humanity must trust to prevent its extension to other states, mainly to
the reaction arising from its experienced effects in the land of its
birth.
Already there appears, not merely in the language of the popular
journals, but in the official acts of the Provisional Government,
decisive evidence that the _socialist ideas_ are about to be carried
into execution by the supreme authority in France. On March 1st, there
appeared the following decree of the Provisional Government:—
“The Provisional Government, considering that the revolution made by
the people should be made for them:
“That it is time to put an end to the long and iniquitous sufferings
of the working classes:
“That the question of labour is one of supreme importance:
“That there can be no higher or more dignified preoccupation of the
Republican Government:
“That it becomes France to study ardently, and to solve, a problem
which now occupies all the states of Europe:
“That it is indispensable, without a moment’s delay, to guarantee to
the people the fruits of their labours:
“The Provisional Government has decreed,—
“That a permanent commission shall be formed, which shall be entitled,
‘The Commission of Government for the Labourers,’ and charged, in a
peculiar and especial manner, with their lot.
“To show the importance which government attaches to this commission,
it names one of its members, M. Louis Blanc, president of the
commission, and for vice-president, another of its members, M. Albret,
mechanical workman.
“Workmen are invited to form part of the commission.
“It shall hold its sittings in the palace of the Luxembourg.
“LOUIS BLANC.
“ARMAND MARRAST.
“GARNIER PAGES.”[6]
How is the Provisional Government to _find funds_ for the enormous
multitudes who will thus be thrown upon them, or to satisfy the
boundless expectations thus formed of them, and which their own acts
have done so much to cherish? Already the want of money has been
experienced. Nearly all the banks of Paris have failed; the savings’
banks have been virtually confiscated, by the depositors being paid only
a tenth in specie, and the Bank of France has suspended cash payments.
The government has got into an altercation with a class of the highest
importance, under existing circumstances, which is striving to liberate
itself from the imposts which are more immediately felt by it. So early
as March 2d, the journalists claimed an exemption from the stamp duties
on the public journals; and on the government hesitating to comply with
their requests, they loudly demand the dismissal of M. Cremieux, the new
minister of justice. The _Democratie Pacifique_ of March 2d, observes—
“The greatest danger of our situation is, not that which comes from
without, but that which comes from within. The most imminent danger
would be the slightest doubt on the intentions of government, the
least retrograde step in the presence of events. That disquietude, we
are bound to admit, already exists in the minds of many—distrust is
the precursor of revolutions.
“The government has had under its eyes the conduct of the people. Let
it imitate it. Energy, constant energy, is the only way to do good.
The people have proved it. It is by energy alone that the prolongation
of struggles is prevented—the effusion of blood arrested—dangerous
reactions averted.
“Forward, and Force to power! Such is the double cry of the Republic.
“The Chamber of Deputies and of Peers must not only be interdicted
from meeting; like royalty, they must be abolished.
“M. Cremieux, the minister of justice, has forgotten his principles.
He is not prepared for the part he has to perform. He blindly yields
to old attachments and prejudices. At the moment when the most
absolute liberty of the press, the most rapid and ceaseless emission
of ideas, is the sole condition of the public safety—at the moment
when we are in the midst of a chaos from whence we cannot escape if
light does not guide our steps—at that moment M. Cremieux proposes to
extinguish it—he proposes this, a retrograde step, to the minister of
finance—the reestablishment of the stamps on journals.
“A revolution of yesterday cannot be thus braved.
“These gentlemen wish a republic surrounded by republican
institutions.
“_The people have not yet laid down their arms._”[7]
The government, after having made a show of resistance, yielded to their
masters. The duties on journals were abolished, and absolute freedom
given to the pouring of the rankest political poisons into the mind of
France.
It is easy to see, with a government resting on such a basis, where the
first practical difficulty will be found. Embarrassment of finance is
the rock on which it will inevitably split: the more certain that it has
been preceded by a huge deficit created by the former government; the
more galling that it will be accompanied by the flight or hoarding of
capital from the measures of the present one. Capitalists are
universally alarmed over the whole country. A monetary crisis, as is the
case with all successful revolutions, and that too of the severest kind,
has ensued. M. Gouin’s bank, the same which formerly bore the name of
Lafitte, has failed under liabilities to the extent of three millions.
Nearly all the other banking establishments of Paris have already
followed the example. The payment of all bills was, by government,
postponed for three weeks, from February 28: a farther extension of the
time of payment for a month after March 20, has been petitioned for by
_eight hundred of the first bankers and merchants in Paris_. This
amounts to a declaration of a general public and private insolvency.
Overwhelmed by the difficulties of his situation, the first minister of
finance has resigned; the second, M. Garnier Pages, has published a
financial account, which exhibits so deplorable a state of the finances,
that it may almost be said to amount to an admission of national
bankruptcy. Despite all the efforts made to uphold them, the French
three per cents, on this publication, fell to forty-seven. The terrors
of the holders of stock are extreme.
An able eye-witness gives the following account of the state of Paris,
amidst this terrible social and financial crisis.—
“I have seen daily and intimately persons of all parties; Legitimatists,
_Conservateurs_, or adherents of the late government—adherents of the
Molé Ministry of half-an-hour—adherents of the Barrot Ministry, equally
short-lived—friends and intimates of members of the Provisional
Government. I can most truly and distinctly affirm, that I saw and heard
nothing from any of them but alarm and consternation; mingled with the
strongest condemnation of the two conflicting parties whose obstinacy
had brought about a collision which every body had feared, though no
one’s fears had come within the widest range of the reality. I heard
only expressions of the conviction that the present order of things
could not last; that, in spite of the heroic efforts, the excellent
intentions, and the acknowledged talents of several members of the
government, it had undertaken to construct an edifice which must fall
and crush them under its ruins; that it was now forced by fear upon
promises, and would be forced upon acts utterly inconsistent with the
stability of any government whatever. In short, the profoundest anxiety
and alarm sit at the heart of the educated classes of France, of
whatever party—and, not the least, of those who have undertaken the
awful task of ruling her. Of that you may be fully assured.
“English Liberals will perhaps say ‘This we expected; but the people?’
Well, I must affirm that, if by ‘people’ they mean the industrious,
quiet working-classes, the real basis of society, the object of the
respect and solicitude of all enlightened rulers—if they mean these men,
the alarm and consternation are greater among them than in the higher
classes, in proportion to the slenderness of the resources they have to
fall back upon; in many cases this amounts to a sort of blank despair.
The more clear-sighted among them see the terrible chances that await
them; they see _capital leaving the country, confidence destroyed, and
employment suddenly suspended or withdrawn, to an extent never seen
before_.
“Let me mention a few small but significant facts:—
“My locksmith told me he had always employed four men; he has discharged
three. An English pastry-cook, who has constantly employed fifteen
journeymen, was about to discharge nearly all. _Every body is turning
away servants, especially men, as the more expensive._ I was told that
good carriage-horses had been sold for five hundred francs each. A vast
number of houses are becoming tenantless; the removal of the English
alone would make a visible change in this respect. And what, think you,
are the feelings of all the tribe of water-carriers, washerwomen, and
the humble dependents for existence on these houses? Nothing, during the
three days, seemed to be more affecting and alarming than the sight of
these humblest ministrants to the prime wants of life rushing from door
to door, even in the quietest streets, to get their hard labour
accomplished in safety. Our _porteur d’eau_ was every morning our
earliest informant of the events of the night, and I was struck with the
good sense and clearness of his views. ‘_Ces messieurs parlent
d’égalité_,’ he said: ‘_est ce qu’ils veulent se faire porteurs d’eau?
C’est absurde—ce sont des mensonges._’ (‘These gentlemen talk of
equality: will they turn water-carriers? It is absurd—these are lies.’)
‘_Ils vont nous ruiner tous._’ (‘They are going to ruin us all.’) These
last words I heard frequently repeated by persons of the working
classes. A poor commissioner, who, for high pay, and through long
_détours_, conveyed a letter for me on the 23d, came in looking aghast.
‘_Nous voilà sans maître._’ (‘Here we are without a master,’) said he.
‘_Bon Dieu! qu’est ce que nous allons devenir?_’ (‘Good God! what will
become of us?’) ‘_Un pays sans maître ce n’est plus un pays._’ (‘A
country without a master is no longer a country.’) ‘_Nous allons
retomber dans la barbarie._’ (‘We shall fall back into barbarism.’)
This, indeed, was so soon felt by all, that masters were appointed. But
has that restored the feeling of reverence for authority, or of
confidence in those who wield it, indispensable to civil society?
“I heard with astonishment English people on the road saying, ‘Oh, all
is quiet now.’ ‘All is going on very well now.’ From no Frenchman have I
heard this superficial view of the case. Paris is indeed quiet enough,
but it is the quiet of exhaustion, fear, distrust, and dejection. The
absolute silence of the streets at night was awful. But a few nights
before the 22d, I had complained of the incessant roll of carriages
during this season of balls. From the night of the 26th to the 3d of
March, the most retired village could not have been more utterly
noiseless. Not a carriage—not a foot-fall—except at intervals the steady
and silent step of the patrol of the National Guard, listened for as the
sole guarantee for safety. ‘Every man,’ said a grocer, wearing the
uniform of the Guard, to me in his shop, ‘must now defend his own. We
have no protectors but ourselves; no police, no army.’”—_Times_, March
8, 1848.
These are sufficiently alarming features in the political and social
condition of any country: but they become doubly so, when it is
recollected that they coexist with unbounded expectations formed in the
labouring masses, in whom supreme power is now both practically and
theoretically vested. The Revolution has been the triumph of the workmen
over the employers, of the “_proletaires_” over the “bourgeois,” of
labour over capital. How such a triumph is to eventuate with a vehement
and indigent population, impelling the government on in the career of
revolution, and capital daily leaving the country or hiding itself from
the dread of the acts of a government about to be appointed by _nine
millions of electors_, is a question on which it well becomes all the
holders of property, in whatever rank, seriously to reflect in this
country.
Some idea of the extravagance and universality of their expectations may
be formed from the following passage in the description of a still later
eye-witness:—
“Paris is to all appearance tranquil; but there is much agitation that
does not show itself outwardly. _The workmen of all trades are intent
on legislation which shall secure more wages for less toil._ They
beset the Luxembourg with processions, and fill the Chamber of Peers
with deputations. Louis Blanc has discovered that to organise labour
in a pamphlet and put the theory into practice are two very different
things. The walls are covered with the manifestoes of the several
branches of occupation; every day sees a new crop; they reveal the
existence of dissentions among the workmen themselves, though they are
all based on nearly the same principles; the seven-hooped pot is to
have ten hoops, and it is to be felony to drink small-beer. The
cochers have secured a tariff, with an advance of wages; the tailors
are demanding the same; the ‘cheap’ establishments are in despair, for
they supply classes that cannot buy at higher prices. An anxious
employer placed the difficulty before some of the men; the only answer
recorded was the comforting assurance that every body will be able to
pay five pounds for his coat ‘as soon as society is regenerated!’ What
is to be said to such magnificence of hope? A _citoyen_ coatmaker can
only shrug his shoulders and wait for the end. One step has been taken
that seems likely to lead to it—the Commission has opened _a register
of all employments, and all seeking to be employed, in Paris_. Not
till the stern truth is revealed by figures will the full difficulty
be known, and some estimate formed of what a government can _not_ do.
All the edicts that can be forced from it by the pressure of the hour
will break down under the weight of necessity, as they always have
done.
“Parallel with this agitation, which is material, runs another, which
is philosophical. The republic is not perfect enough, and some vile
distinctions still exist, irritating to the eye of equality. The
government is petitioned to abolish all marks of honour for civilians;
the names of distinguished citizens can be recorded in a golden book,
a _livre d’or_ of the Republic, as the recompense of great services;
but no cross or riband is to be worn. Equality _devant la mort_ is
also insisted on; the same place in the cemetery and the same bier for
all are to render the grave in appearance, as in reality, the great
leveller. This proscription of the poor vanities of life and death is
made a serious object by some of the active spirits of the time, as if
there were any real importance in them.”[8]—_Times_, March 13th, 1848.
If, with material resources continually and rapidly diminishing, capital
leaving the country, employment failing, bankruptcies general, the
expenditure of the opulent at an end, the finances of the State in
hopeless embarrassment, the French Government can satisfy these
extravagant wants and expectations without plunging in a foreign war,
they will achieve what has never yet been accomplished by man.
Who is answerable for this calamitous Revolution, which has thus
arrested the internal prosperity of France, involved its finances in
apparently hopeless embarrassment, thrown back for probably half a
century the progress of real freedom in that country, and perhaps
consigned it to a series of internal convulsions, and Europe to the
horrors of general war, for a very long period? We answer without
hesitation that the responsibility rests with two parties, and two
parties only—the King and the National Guard.
The King is most of all to blame, for having engaged in a conflict, and,
when victory was within his grasp, allowing it to slip from his hands
from want of resolution at the decisive moment. It is too soon after
these great and astonishing events to be able to form a decided opinion
on the whole details connected with them; but the concurring statements
from all parties go to prove that on the _first_ day the troops of the
line were perfectly steady; and history will record that the heroic
firmness of the Municipal Guard has rivalled all that is most honourable
in French history. The military force was immense; not less than eighty
thousand men, backed by strong forts, and amply provided with all the
muniments of war. Their success on the first day was unbroken; they had
carried above a hundred barricades, and were in possession of all the
military positions of the capital. But at this moment the indecision of
the King ruined every thing. Age seems to have extinguished the vigour
for which he was once so celebrated. He shrunk from a contest with the
insurgents, paralysed the troops by orders not to fire on the people,
and openly receded before the insurgent populace, by abandoning Guizot
and the firm policy which he himself had adopted, and striving to
conciliate revolution by the _mezzo termine_ of Count Molé, and a more
liberal cabinet. It is with retreat in presence of an insurrection, as
in the case of an invading army; the first move towards the rear is a
certain step to ruin. The moment it was seen that the King was giving
way, all was paralysed, because all foresaw to which side the victory
would incline. The soldiers threw away their muskets, the officers broke
their swords, and the vast array, equal to the army which fought at
Austerlitz, was dissolved like a rope of sand. Louis Philippe fell
without either the intrepidity of the royal martyr in 1793, or the
dignity of the elder house of Bourbon in 1830; and if it be true, as is
generally said, that the Queen urged the King to mount on horseback and
die “en roi” in front of the Tuileries, and he declined, preferring to
escape in disguise to this country, history must record, with shame,
that royalty perished in France without the virtues it was entitled to
expect in the meanest of its supporters.
The second cause which appears to have occasioned the overthrow of the
monarchy in France, is the general, it may be said universal, defection
of the National Guard. It had been openly announced that twenty thousand
of that body were to line the Champs Elysés _in their uniform_ on
occasion of the banquet; it was perfectly known that that banquet was a
mere pretext for getting the forces of this Revolution together; and
that the intention of the conspirators was to march in a body to the
Tuileries after it was over, and compel the King to accede to their
demands. When they were called out in the afternoon, they declined to
act against the people, and by their treachery occasioned the defection
of the troops of the line, and rendered farther resistance hopeless.
They expected, by this declaration against the King of their choice, the
monarch of the barricades, to secure a larger share in the government
for themselves. They went to the Chamber of Deputies, intending to put
up the Duchess of Orleans as Regent, and the Count of Paris as King, and
to procure a large measure of reform for the constitution. What was the
result? Why, that they were speedily supplanted by the rabble who
followed in their footsteps, and who, deriding the eloquence of Odillon
Barrot, and insensible to the heroism of the Duchess of Orleans, by
force and violence expelled the majority of the deputies from their
seats, seized on the President’s chair, and, amidst an unparalleled
scene of riot and confusion, subverted the Orleans dynasty, proclaimed a
Republic, and adjourned to the Hotel de Ville to name a Provisional
Government! The account given of this whole revolt by an eye-witness,
which has appeared in the _Times_, is so instructive, that we make no
apology for transferring it to our columns:—
“On the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 23, Paris was greatly agitated,
but no severe fighting had taken place; a few barricades had been
raised and retaken by the troops; the plans of the government were
complete—Marshal Bugeaud had been named to the command of the forces
in Paris, and M. Guizot informed the King that he was confident that
the Executive Government could put down the insurrection. The royal
answer was—a dismissal. The King dismissed M. Guizot, and dissolved
the Cabinet at that momentous instant, when all the energies of united
power were required to fight in the streets a battle which it had
itself deliberately provoked.
“Still, however, the mischief might yet have been repaired if vigorous
measures had been taken. But, from that hour, nothing but the most
extraordinary blunders and pusillanimity marked the conduct of the
Court. Count Molé was sent for, and the evening of Wednesday passed in
attempts, or no attempts, we hardly know which, on his part to form a
semi-Liberal Cabinet. In the city, the fall of the Guizot ministry was
hailed with acclamation and illumination, as the first sign of popular
victory; and at that same critical juncture the fatal discharge of
musketry took place opposite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which
stained the pavement with blood, and inflamed the people to a
revolutionary pitch. The night was spent in preparation for a more
terrible morrow; but as yet the army had neither fraternised nor laid
down its weapons. It was, on the contrary, for the most part prepared
to act; but a circumstance occurred at Court which totally paralysed
its resistance.
“After Count Molé’s failure, the King sent for M. Thiers. That
gentleman may be said to have actually formed a Cabinet in conjunction
with M. Odillon Barrot and M. Duvergier de Hauranne, for they
instantly proceeded to the discharge of the highest possible duty
which could devolve on ministerial responsibility. The one act of
their government was the publication of that inconceivable
proclamation, stating that _no further resistance should be made, and
the promulgation of orders to the officers commanding regiments to
withdraw them_. This was of course the capitulation of the Monarchy.
Marshal Bugeaud—who had the command of the troops, had now completed
his preparations for the general attack of the barricades, and was
confident of success—protested most energetically against this
extraordinary order, and said that if it was acted on all was lost.
The King’s then ministers, M. Thiers and M. Barrot, insisted; the King
took their advice, and Marshal Bugeaud resigned the command of the
troops, observing that it was useless for him to retain it if nothing
was to be done. General Lamoricière was therefore named to the command
of Paris, and M. Thiers and his friends proceeded to effect their
pacific arrangements. The effects of their orders were immediately
perceptible, although the declaration of their names was certainly not
followed by the consequences they had anticipated. The officers of the
army, indignant at so unexpected a termination of their duties,
sheathed their swords; the men allowed themselves to be disarmed by
the mob, whom they had been ordered not to resist, and the people,
encountering no serious opposition except from the Municipal Guard,
which was cut to pieces, rushed on to the conquest of the Palais-Royal
and the Tuileries. To sum up this narrative in two words—the dismissal
of the Guizot government rendered it impossible for the Executive
Government to act effectually; the subsequent advice of M. Thiers and
the resignation of Marshal Bugeaud, rendered it impossible to act at
all. If this be, as we have every reason to believe it is, a correct
narrative of these transactions, we are not surprised that M. Thiers
and his colleagues should not have made themselves conspicuous in the
subsequent passage of this Revolution.
“The mob of Paris, at no hour of the day, (the 24th,) was formidable
to ten thousand men, much less to a hundred thousand, or at least
eighty thousand. On the Thursday (24th) public opinion had abandoned
the _émeute_. _The National Guard would now have done any thing to
reproduce order, but they had no time_; there was no opportunity to
reunite themselves; besides which, they wanted courage and support,
and did not _even dream of the extreme to which things might be
pushed_. There never was, at any time, any _acharnement_ among the
people; the troops were every where well received; not a hostile head
looked from a window. It was hoped that something might be done by a
demonstration of public opinion, but nothing more. The _émeutiers_ the
first and second day simply took advantage of the absence of the
National Guard. They were all the time ill looked upon by the real
people of Paris, but they were permitted to go on as a means of action
on the court and government. The accident, or rather the gross and
infamous blunder, committed before the Bureau des Affaires Etrangères
(of which the accounts published are erroneous), produced a violent
irritation, which was ably worked upon by the Republican committee,
who were all along on the watch; but this irritation, which certainly
changed the character of the contest, gave no arms to the people; and
although it increased their numbers, they were never, even
numerically, formidable, as I have said, to ten thousand men. As for
the barricades, there was not one that was ever defended except
against some weak patrol, and then, after a little popping, it was
always abandoned. Literally, there was no fighting; there was
skirmishing on the part of the brave Municipals—the only force that
acted—and I presume it acted on orders which did not emanate from the
chief military authority, but had some separate and general
instructions of its own. Literally, I repeat, there was no fighting.
How could there be? There were no arms; that is, not a musket to a
hundred men, till eleven or twelve o-clock in the day, when the
troops, without orders—except “not to fire,” or act against the
people—became, in several parts of Paris, mixed up and united with
them.”—_Times_, March 8 and 14, 1848.
Here, then, is the whole affair clearly revealed. It was the timidity of
Government, and the defection of the National Guard, which ruined every
thing; which paralysed the troops of the line, encouraged the
insurgents, left the brave Municipal Guards to their fate, and caused
the surrender of the Tuileries. And what has been the result of this
shameful treachery on the part of the sworn defenders of order—this
“_civic_” prætorian guard of France? Nothing but this, that they have
destroyed the monarchy, ruined industry, banished capital, rendered
freedom hopeless, and made bankrupt the state! Such are the effects of
armed men forgetting the first of social duties, that of fidelity to
their oaths. How soon were these treacherous National Guards passed in
the career of revolution by the infuriated rabble! How soon were Odillon
Barrot and Thiers supplanted by Lamartine and Arago! How rapidly were
the Duchess of Orleans and the Count of Paris expelled at the point of
the bayonet from the Chamber of Deputies—the cry for reform drowned in
that of revolution! How many of the twenty thousand National Guards, who
by their treachery brought about the Revolution, will be solvent at the
end of two months? Not a tenth of their number. They will perish
deservedly and ignobly; ruined in their fortunes, beggared in their
families, despised by their compatriots, execrated by Europe! That they
may anticipate what history will say of their conduct, let them listen
to the verdict which it _has_ pronounced on the National Guard which, on
a similar crisis, 10th August 1792, betrayed Louis XVI., as pronounced
by an authority whom they will not suspect of leaning to the Royalist
side—M. Lamartine.
“The National Guard, on the 10th August, returned humiliated and in
consternation to their shops and counting-houses; _they had justly lost
the lead of the people_. Thenceforth it could no longer aspire but to be
the parade force of the Revolution, compelled to assist at all its acts,
at all its fêtes, _at all its crimes; a vain living decoration of all
the mechanists of the Revolution_.”[9]
Of which revolution is Lamartine now speaking; of that of 10th August
1792, or of 24th February 1848? Beyond all doubt history will pass a
severer judgment on the treachery which overthrew Louis Philippe than on
that which consummated the destruction of Louis XVI.: for the former had
the example of the latter for its guide; they knew how soon the massacre
of September followed the triumph of August, and what incalculable
calamities the defection of their predecessors in the Place Carousel
brought upon their country and Europe.
What benefit have the working classes derived, or are they likely to
derive, from this deplorable convulsion? Great ones they doubtless
expect, as it has issued in a triumph of labour over capital. But what
has it realised? We shall mention one or two particulars to illustrate
the benefits hitherto reaped by this class from its victory.
The savings’ banks of France had prospered immensely under the firm and
pacific government of Louis Philippe. The following account of them is
derived from official sources.
“The state of the savings’ banks in France at the time of the
Revolution indicated an extraordinary degree of confidence in the
stability of the late government. In 1834 there were only seventy
savings’ banks in France, and the amount of deposits on hand was
34,000,000 francs. In 1839 there were four hundred and four banks, and
the deposits had increased to 171,000,000 francs; in 1848, at the
moment of the Revolution, the deposits had risen to 355,000,000
francs, or ten times the amount deposited fourteen years before. In
1839 the average value of each deposit was 550 francs, which is
probably increased to 600 francs average at the present time. The
partial suspension of payment by these institutions must affect at
least half a million of persons of the most industrious and economical
part of the population, chiefly belonging to the towns, and they are
deprived of a large portion of their savings at the very moment they
most need them.”—_Times_, March 14, 1848.
Now, these savings’ banks, holding deposits to the amount of about
£14,000,000 at the commencement of the Revolution, and which had
increased _tenfold_ during Louis Philippe’s reign, have to all practical
purposes _been rendered bankrupt_. Unable to stand the dreadful run upon
them after the outbreak, or to realise the amount of their deposits by
the sale of their funded property, in consequence of its prodigious
fall, they had no resource but to suspend payment. By a decree of
Government, the holders of deposits in the savings’ banks are to receive
only _a tenth_ in cash, the remainder being payable six months hence, in
a paper now practically worth nothing. By this single result of the
Revolution, above five hundred thousand of the most meritorious and
hard-working of the operatives of France have been in effect deprived of
the savings of a whole lifetime.
Nor is the condition of the labouring population in any degree more
favoured. In the _Times_ correspondent from Paris of March 14, we find
the following account of their present condition:—
“The financial question, the state of trade and commerce, and the task
of providing work and food for the people, with which the government
has charged itself, are additional motives for seriousness, however.
The credit of more than one banking-house is to-day said to be
tottering. One firm, it is openly mentioned, has resolved to stop
payment to-morrow. Trade is very bad. Work will soon become scarce,
and distress and outcry must be expected; and with the knowledge of
all these facts, and with the determination to do every thing possible
for the relief of the working classes, possessed by the Provisional
Government, this source of uneasiness is menacing to-day. I wish a
more cheerful view of the situation of affairs were more general than
it is, for it might check the departure of rich natives and foreigners
from the capital, who _continue to retire from it in alarming
numbers_, and, obviously, with no view to return, for we hear of sales
of carriages and horses, for a _fifth part of the value_ they bore
three weeks since. _Twelve thousand servants are said to be already
discharged_ in Paris, and many houses or hotels in the fashionable
quarters have become literally devoid of occupants.”—_Times_, 14th
March 1848.
That such a state of things must in the end terminate in domestic or
foreign war must be evident to all who have looked even on the surface
of past events. The causes which at present uphold, and must ere long
destroy the Republican Government in France, are thus ably stated by the
Paris correspondent of the same well-informed journal:—
“The Provisional Government continues to exist at the moment only from
two causes. The first is, that all respectable persons hasten to its
support under the influence of fear. The other day every body expected
to be robbed and murdered: as the Provisional Government showed a
strong desire to preserve order, all those individuals, still
surprised to find themselves unplundered and unassassinated,
attributed the miracle to the government, and ran to its support in
self-defence. The adhesions have been readier and more numerous many
times over than in 1830. The second cause which gives a short reprieve
to the government is, that it _humours the ferocious monster that made
it_,—and which is ready at any moment to overturn it as it set it
up,—by the most absurd indulgences, by still more fatal promises for
the future. The same set of ruffians (heroes) who forced the Chamber,
and who thrust the Provisional Government on the deputies, are still
there to invade the Hotel de Ville, and substitute another idol for
Lamartine & Co. Still I believe they will not do so just yet; perhaps
we may get on till the constitutional or National Assembly meets, but
I doubt it. But then, even then,—what is to take place? Faction,
clubs, war to the knife. The French are precisely the same men they
were in ‘89—they are not changed in the least. Classes have been
modified by wealth, commerce, prosperity, &c.; but _these are the
quiet classes, who will be swallowed up in the course of the next five
years_. At the present moment the working, or the _soi-disant_ working
classes, who are literally the sovereign power, are looked upon with
fear, disgust, and abhorrence by every man in France of a superior
condition, _including the National Guard_; and they are all
speculating how to get quit of them; while, on the other hand, Louis
Blanc is keeping them quiet by preaching Utopianism. He is doing so,
honestly and enthusiastically, it is said; and certain it is, that a
great mass of the people is flattered and soothed by the idea of
converting work into an amusement, of obtaining perpetual easy
employment by the state, and a pension at fifty-five years of age.
This pause, however, does not deceive the commerce, _the capital, the
education of France, and, as I said, the universal consideration is
how to throw off the many-headed tyrant_. The plan of doing so, most
consonant with the French character, is war. The National Guard is
convinced they must shortly fight these men themselves, or send them
to fight the foreigner; the latter is the expedient that will be hit
upon; and unfortunately the state of Europe incites them to interfere
in the concerns of others, from whom they will receive invitations
which, in the condition of men’s minds in this country, it will be
impossible for any government to reject. Besides which, even Frenchmen
of the best order are, on questions of national glory or honour, not
to be relied on for a moment; the best of them may be carried away by
a word, a paragraph, a rumour, and all rave ‘Frontier of the Rhine,’
‘Waterloo,’ and a thousand other follies, which, however sad, may be
excused in the present state of their neighbours, though not for that
reason the less to be lamented. In all international questions
whatever, the characteristics of the French are arrogance, and
susceptibility of so extreme a nature, that no body of Frenchmen can
be dealt with by foreigners. A sovereign and a minister or two in cold
blood, and with all the weight of undivided responsibility upon them,
are difficult enough to manage even by the ablest and most impartial
of negotiators; but the masses must always be intractable.
“I give the present Provisional Government immense credit for their
efficient exertions, and I have considerable reliance on the good
intentions of the majority of them; but they will not last; and, above
all, whether they last or not, they must obey and not pretend to
guide. Lamartine, by his genius, has now and then gained a point; but
he, as well as the rest, have been rather _the organs of the sovereign
of the day than his directors and guides_.”—_Times_, March 13, 1848.
It is not surprising that views of this description should be
entertained by all well-informed persons on the spot in France, for the
new “National Assembly,” to whom the formation of a constitution is to
be intrusted in that country, is to be composed in such a way, as
renders the direct or indirect spoliation of property a matter of almost
certainty. The following is the decree of the Provisional Government on
the subject:—
“FRENCH REPUBLIC.
“LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.
“The Provisional Government of the Republic, wishing to resign, as
soon as possible, into the hands of the Definitive Government the
powers it exercises in the interest and by the command of the people,
“Decrees,
“Article 1.—The electoral assemblies are convoked in each district for
the 9th of April next, to elect the representatives of the people in
the National Assembly, which is to frame the constitution.
“Article 2.—The election shall have the population for its basis.
“Article 3.—The total number of the representatives of the people
shall be 900, including those of Algeria and the French colonies.
“Article 4.—They shall be apportioned by the deputies in the
proportion indicated in the annexed table.
“Article 5.—The suffrage shall be direct and universal.
“Article 6.—All Frenchmen, 21 years of age, having resided in the
district during six months, and not judicially deprived of or
suspended in the exercise of their civic rights, are electors.
“Article 7.—All Frenchmen, 25 years of age, and not judicially
deprived of or suspended in the exercise of their civic rights, are
eligible.
“Article 8.—The ballot shall be secret.
“Article 9.—All the electors shall vote in the chief town of their
district, by ballot. Each bulletin shall contain as many names as
there shall be representatives to elect in the department.
“No man can be named a representative of the people unless he obtain
2,000 suffrages.
“Article 10.—Every representative of the people shall receive an
indemnity of 25f. per day during the session.”
Here is a tolerably democratic constitution, which will probably excite
some little disquietude in the breasts of the holders of French stock
and railway shares. Universal suffrage—a single assembly of nine hundred
members, each of whom is to be paid a pound a-day during the session. To
make the experiment still more perilous, the minister of public
instruction to the Provisional Government has issued a circular to the
ministers of instruction throughout the country, in which he enjoins
them to recommend to the people “_to avoid the representatives who enjoy
the advantages of education or the gifts of fortune_.”[10] This circular
excited, as well it might, such a panic in Paris, that the other members
of the Provisional Government were obliged to disown it. But that only
makes matters worse: it shows what the Provisional Government really
meant, and how completely they have already come to stand on the verge
of civil war. The projected decree for levelling the National Guard, by
distributing the companies of voltigeurs and chasseurs (the _élite_)
through the whole mass, has already produced an address by their
battalion, _in uniform_, to the Provisional Government, which was
received at the Hotel de Ville by an immense crowd with cries of “_A bas
les Aristocrats! on ne passe pas!_” It is no wonder the National Guard
are at length alarmed. The aristocracies of knowledge and property are
to be alike discarded! Ignorance and a sympathy with the most indigent
class are to be the great recommendations to the electors! This is
certainly making root-and-branch work; it is Jack Cade alive again.
Paris, it is expected, will return for its representatives
11 of the Provisional Government,
5 Socialists,
18 Operatives,
——
34
Truly the National Guard will soon reap the whirlwind; we are not
surprised the French funds have undergone so prodigious a fall. The
holders of Spanish bonds and American States’ debts know how universal
suffrage assemblies settle with their state-creditors. Sidney Smith has
told the world something on the subject.
The “pressure from without” on the Provisional Government becomes every
day more severe and alarming as time rolls on: wages cease, stock falls
in value, savings’ banks suspend payment, and all means of relief, save
such as may be extorted from the fears of the government, disappear. The
following is a late account of the state of matters in this important
respect, from the French metropolis:—
“France, crowded, impoverished, indebted, and straitened at all
points, sees an opening in the exercise of a sovereign people’s will.
It gets a glimpse of light and life through the Hotel de Ville. Hence
this desperate competition for the national resources; and hence, we
grieve to add, this wasteful and improvident distribution.
“These deputations are a congenital evil. They began from the very
moment the Provisional Government was proclaimed in the Chamber of
Deputies. Its progress thence from the Hotel de Ville was a
deputation. The members immediately began to thunder at the doors and
clamour for admittance. A club orator has since boasted that, had it
not been for this importunity, nothing would have been done—that not a
step has been taken without external impulse—and that the people had
to wait two hours, on that wonderful Thursday, before the Provisional
Government would announce a republic. Since that moment the
deputations may be said _never to have ceased in Paris_. For the first
week they did not affect a distinctive character, but came as accident
had thrown them together—_ten thousand from this quarter, and twenty
thousand from that; sometimes the people, and sometimes the National
Guard, or a medley of all sorts. In those days they were armed._
Lamartine had to turn out six times a-day, make gestures half an hour
for a hearing, and then spend his brilliant eloquence on a field of
bayonets and blouses. When the poet had sunk from sheer exhaustion,
the indefatigable deputation adjourned to the Ministry of the
Interior, and drew forth M. Ledru Rollin, who had not learned his way
about the apartments, or the names of the officials, before he was
required to promulgate, off-hand, a complete system for the internal
administration of France. It is possible that his first thoughts might
have been as good as his second on this subject; but the demand was
nevertheless premature. The stream of deputation has since become less
turbid, violent, and full; but it has been quite continuous, and, to
all appearance, _Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis œvum_.
“We believe there is not a single branch of employment or of idleness
in Paris, that has not marched _en masse_ to the Hotel de Ville to
demand _more wages, less work, certainty of employment, and a release
from all the rules and restrictions which the experience of their
masters had found to be necessary_. It is unwise to damp the
expectations of five thousand armed men. In some cases, therefore, the
government capitulated on rather hard terms. By and by it adopted what
we really think the best possible alternative. It requested the trades
to nominate their several deputies, and set the operative parliament
to adjust all its rival pretensions at the Luxembourg. Then there came
deputations of women, of students, of pawnbrokers’ tickets, of
bankers, of bread-eaters, of bread-makers, of cabmen, of ’bussmen, of
sailors, of porters, of every thing that had, or had not, an office
and a name. France, of course, has had the precedence, having, in a
manner, the first start; but the nations of the earth are beginning to
find room in the endless procession. All the world will run into it in
time. The vast column is just beginning to form in Chinese Tartary,
and is slowly debouching round the Caspian Sea. Already we see a
hundred European sections. They follow in one another’s trail. An
Anacharsis Clootz is waiting to receive them at the barriers, and
marshal them to the Hotel de Ville.”—_Times_, March 15, 1848.
This state of matters is certainly abundantly formidable to France and
to Europe. A great experiment is making as to the practicability of the
working-classes governing themselves and the rest of the state, without
the aid of property or education. France has become a _huge
trades-union_, the committee of which forms the Provisional Government,
and the decrees of which compose the foundation of the future government
of the republic. Such an experiment is certainly new in human affairs.
No previous example of it is to be found, at least, in the old world;
for it will hardly be said that the republic of 1793, steeped in blood,
engrossed in war, ruled with a rod of iron by the Committee of Public
Salvation, is a precedent to which the present regeneration of society
will refer, in support of the principles they are now reducing to
practice. We fear its state has been not less justly than graphically
described by one of our most distinguished correspondents, who
says—“They are sitting as at a pantomime; every thing is grand and
glorious; France is regenerated, and all is flourish of trumpets.
Meanwhile France is _utterly insane—a vast lunatic asylum without its
doctors_.”
The present state of Paris, (March 21,) and the germs of social conflict
which are beginning to emerge from amidst the triumph of the Socialists,
may be judged of from the following extracts of the correspondent of the
_Morning Chronicle_, dated Paris, 18th March:—
“Paris, Friday Evening.—There has been another day of great excitement
and alarm in Paris. Upwards of thirty thousand of the working classes
congregated in the Champs Elysés, and went in procession to the Hotel
de Ville to assure the Government that it might depend upon their
assistance against any attempt that might be made to coerce it, from
whatever quarter it came. I need hardly inform you that this
formidable demonstration is intended as a _contre coup_ to the protest
presented by the National Guards yesterday, against M. Ledru Rollin’s
decree dissolving the grenadier and light companies of the National
Guards. It is not the least alarming feature in this affair, that it
exhibits an amount of discipline among the working classes, and a
promptitude of execution, which are but too sure indications both of
the power and the readiness of the leaders of the movement to do
mischief. It was only yesterday that the demonstration took place
which displeased the masses; yet, in one short night, the order goes
forth, the arrangements are made, and before ordinary mortals are out
of their beds, thirty thousand of the working classes are marshalled
under their leaders, and on their march to make a demonstration of
their force, in presence of the executive government—a demonstration
which, on the present occasion, to be sure, is favourable to the
Government, but which to-morrow may be against it. Who have the orders
proceeded from that drew together these masses? How were they brought
together? The affair is involved in mystery, but there is enough in it
to show an amount of organisation for which the public was not
prepared; and which ought to show all those within its operation that
they are sitting upon a barrel of gunpowder. The fact is—and there is
no denying or concealing it—Paris is in the possession of the clubs,
who rule not only it, but the ostensible government. The National
Guards, so powerful only a week ago, are now impotent whether for good
or evil. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The National
Guards have quarrelled. The Chasseurs look with jealousy on the
_compagnies d’élite_—the _compagnies d’élite_ will not fraternise with
the Chasseurs. The eighty-four thousand men, who formed the National
Guards before the 24th of February, look with contempt on the one
hundred and fifty thousand new men thrust into their ranks by M. Ledru
Rollin, for election purposes, and call them _canaille_. The new
levies feel that they cannot compete in wealth with the good company
in which they so unexpectedly find themselves, and they call the old
guards _aristocrats_. Add to this the discontent of the grenadier and
light companies at being deprived of their distinctive associations
and dress, the displeasure of the old officers, who are about to be
deprived of their epaulettes by their new and democratic associates,
and the intriguing of the would-be officers to secure a majority of
suffrages in their own favour, and you may arrive at a judgment of the
slight chance there is of the National Guards of the present day
uniting for any one purpose or object. The result of this is obvious.
In case of an outbreak, the National Guards, who were so useful in
re-establishing order on the two days after the abdication of Louis
Philippe, could no longer be depended on. Paris would be in the
possession of the mob, and that mob is under the direction of leaders
composed of the worst and the most unscrupulous of demagogues.”
The same correspondent adds:—
“The financial and commercial crisis which has created such ravages
here for the last week is rapidly extending. I have already given you
a distressing list of private bankers who have been obliged to suspend
payment. Another bank, though not one of any great name, was spoken of
yesterday as being on the eve of bankruptcy; but on inquiry, I find
that the bank is still open this morning, although it is doubtful if
it will continue so to the end of the day. I abstain from mentioning
the name. The commercial world is just in as deep distress as the
financial world. _Every branch of trade is paralysed._ It is useless
to attempt to give particular names or even trades. I shall,
therefore, only mention, that in one branch of trade, which is
generally considered one of the richest in France, namely, the metal
trade, there is an almost total suspension of payments. It is not that
the traders have not property, but that they cannot turn it into cash.
They have acceptances to meet, and they have acceptances in hand, but
they cannot pay what is due by them, for they cannot get what others
owe. In short, _trade is paralysed_, for the medium by which it is
ordinarily carried on has disappeared. In other trades precisely the
same circumstances occur; but I only mention this one trade as showing
the position of all others. How long is this to last? No one can say;
but one thing certain is, that no symptom of amelioration has hitherto
shown itself.”—_Morning Chronicle_, March 20.
As the experiment now making in France is new, and in the highest degree
important, so it is to the last degree to be wished that it may go on
_undisturbed_. The other powers of Europe cannot be too much on their
guard against it; but no armed intervention should be attempted, if
France retains the pacific attitude she has hitherto held in regard to
other states. The republicans of that country have never ceased to
declare that the first Revolution terminated in internal bloodshed,
military despotism, and foreign subjugation, because it was not let
alone—because the Girondists plunged it into war, in order to provide a
vent for the ardent passions and vehement aspirations of the unemployed
multitudes in that country. Lamartine admits, in his celebrated
circular, that in 1792 “war was a necessity to France.” He disclaims, as
every man of the least knowledge on the subject must do, the idea that
it was provoked by the European powers, who, it is historically known,
were drawn into it when wholly unprepared, and as unwillingly as a
conscientious father of a family is forced into a duel. Lamartine says
the same necessity no longer exists—that the world has become pacific,
and that internal regeneration, not foreign conquest, is the end of this
revolution. We hope it is so. We are sure it is ardently desired in this
country that pacific relations should not be disturbed with the great
republic, provided she keeps within her own territory, and does not seek
to assuage her thirst at foreign fountains. By all means let the long
wished-for experiment be made. Let it be seen how society can get on
without the direction of property and knowledge. Let it be seen into
what sort of state the doctrines of the Socialists and St Simonians, the
dictates of the trades-unions, the clamour of the working masses, will
speedily reduce society. Theirs be the glory and the honour if the
experiment succeeds—theirs the disgrace and the obloquy if it fails. Let
all other nations stand aloof, and witness the great experiment—“a clear
stage and no favour” be the universal maxim. But let every other people
abstain from imitating the example, _till it is seen how the experiment
has succeeded in the great parent republic_. It will be time enough to
follow its footsteps when experience has proved it is conducive to human
happiness and social stability.
But while, as ardently as any Socialist in existence, we deprecate the
commencement of hostilities by any European power, and earnestly desire
to see the great social experiment now making in France brought to a
pacific issue, in order that its practicability and expedience may for
ever be determined among men, yet it is evident that things _may_ take a
different issue in that country. It is possible—though God forbid we
should say it is probable—that the great republic may, from internal
suffering, be driven to foreign aggression. This, on Lamartine’s own
admission, has happened once: it may happen twice. France has four
hundred thousand regular troops under arms; and every man capable of
bearing a musket is to be forthwith enrolled in the National Guard.
Twenty-five thousand of that body have already been taken into regular
and permanent pay, at thirty sous, or about fifteenpence, a-day, and
sent to the frontier. It is impossible to say how soon this immense and
excited mass, with arms in their hands, and little food in their
stomachs, may _drive_ the government, as in 1792 they did that of the
Girondists, on Lamartine’s admission, into foreign warfare. It behoves
Europe to be on its guard. Fortunately the course which its governments
should pursue in such an event lies clear and open. They have only to
resume the Treaty of Chaumont, concluded in 1813, to curb the ambition
of the great military republic of which Napoleon was the head. Let that
treaty be secretly but immediately renewed as a purely _defensive
league_. Let no one think of attacking France; but the moment that
France invades any other power, let the four great powers forthwith
bring a hundred and fifty thousand each into the field. Let not the
wretched mistake be again committed, of the others looking tamely on
when one is assailed—“et dum singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur.”[11]
The moment the French cross the Rhine or the Alps, the states of Europe
must stand side by side as they did at Leipsic and Waterloo, if they
would avoid another long period of oppression by the conquering
republicans.
Nearly sixty years have elapsed since Mr Burke observed—“The age of
chivalry is gone; that of sophists, economists, and calculators has
succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never more
shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex—that proud
submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom. The unbought grace of life—the cheap defence of nations, the
nurse of manly sentiments—is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of
principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound,
which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled
whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half of its evil,
by losing all its grossness.”[12] What a commentary on these well-known
and long-admired words have recent events afforded! It is indeed gone,
the loyalty to rank and sex—the proud submission, the dignified
obedience, the _subordination of the heart_, which formerly
characterised and adorned the states of modern Europe. With more courage
than the German Empress, the Duchess of Orleans fronted the
revolutionary mob in the Chamber of Deputies; but no swords leapt from
their scabbards in the Chamber of Deputies when her noble appeal was
made to the loyalty of France—no generous hearts found vent in the
words, “Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!” It could no longer be
said—
“Fair Austria spread her mournful charms—
The Queen, the beauty, roused the world to arms.”
The infuriated rabble pointed their muskets at the royal heroine, and
the few loyal members of the assembly were glad to purchase her safety
by removing her from the disgraceful scene. Not a shot was thereafter
fired; not a show even of resistance to the plebeian usurpation was
made. An army of four hundred thousand men, five hundred thousand
National Guards, thirty-four millions of men, in a moment forgot their
loyalty, broke their oaths, and surrendered their country to the worst
of tyrannies, the tyranny of a multitude of tyrants.
“The unbought grace of life,” says Mr Burke, “the _cheap defence of
nations_, is at an end.” What a commentary has the triumph of the
Barricades, the government of Louis Philippe, afforded on these words!
M. Garnier Pages, in his Financial Report, has unfolded the state of the
French finances, the confusion and disastrous state of which he is fain
to ascribe to the prodigal expenditure and unbounded corruption of Louis
Philippe. He tells us, and we doubt not with truth, that during the
seventeen years of his government, the expenditure has been raised from
900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000,) to 1700,000,000 francs,
(£68,000,000;) that the debt has been increased during that period by
£64,000,000; and that the nation was running, under his direction,
headlong into the gulf of national bankruptcy. He observes, with a sigh,
how moderate in comparison, how cheap in expenditure, and pacific in
conduct, was the government of Charles X., which never brought its
expenditure up to £40,000,000. It is all true—it is what we predicted
eighteen years ago would be the inevitable result of a democratic
revolt; it is the consummation we invariably predicted of the transports
following the fall of Charles X. The republicans, now so loud in
reprobation of the expenditure of the Citizen King, forget that his
throne was of their own making; that he was a successful democratic
usurper; that his power was established to the sound of the shouts of
the republicans in all Europe, amidst the smoke of the Barricades. A
usurping government is necessarily and invariably more costly than a
legitimate one; because, having lost the loyalty of the heart, it has no
foundation to rest on, but the terrors of the senses, or the seductions
of interest. It was for precisely the same reason that William III. in
ten years raised the expenditure of Great Britain from £1,800,000 a
year, to £6,000,000; and that, in the first twenty years of the English
government subsequent to the Revolution, the national debt had increased
from £600,000 to £54,000,000. When the moral and cheap bond of loyalty
is broken, government has no resource but an appeal to the passions or
interests of the people. The Convention tried an appeal to their
republican passions, and they brought on the Reign of Terror. Napoleon
tried an appeal to their military passions, and he brought on the
subjugation of France by Europe. Louis Philippe, as the only remaining
resource, appealed to their selfish interests, and he induced the
revolution of 1848. Mankind cannot escape from the gentle influence of
moral obligations, but to fall under the reaction of conquest, the
debasement of corruption, or the government of force.
But all these governments, say the republicans, fell, because they
departed from the principles of the Revolution, and because they became
corrupted by power as soon as they had tasted its sweets. But even
supposing this were true,—supposing that Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre,
Napoleon, and Louis Philippe were all overthrown, not because they took
the only method left open to them to preserve the support of the
senators, but because they departed from the principles of the
Revolution; do the republicans not see that the very announcement of
that fact is the most decisive condemnation of their system of
government? Do they expect to find liberals more eloquent than Mirabeau,
republicans more energetic than Danton, socialists more ardent than
Robespierre, generals more capable than Napoleon, citizen kings more
astute than Louis Philippe? Republican power must be committed to some
one. Mankind cannot exist an hour without a government: the first act of
the infuriated and victorious rabble in the Chamber of Deputies was to
name a Provisional one. But if experience has proved that intellect the
most powerful, patriotism the most ardent, genius the most transcendent,
penetration the most piercing, experience the most extensive, are
invariably shipwrecked amidst the temptations and the shoals of newly
acquired republican power, do they not see that it is not a form of
government adapted for the weakness of humanity; and that if the leaders
of revolution are not impelled to destruction by an external and
overbearing necessity, they are infallibly seduced into it by the
passions which, amidst the novelty of newly acquired power, arise in
their own breasts? In either case, a revolution government must
terminate in its own destruction,—in private sufferings and public
disasters; and so it will be with the government of M. Lamartine and
that of the new National Assembly, as it has been with all those which
have preceded it.
“Deus patiens,” says St Augustin, “quia æternus.”[13]—What an awful
commentary on this magnificent text have recent events afforded!
Eighteen years ago Louis Philippe forgot his loyalty and broke his oath;
the first prince of the blood elevated himself to power by successful
treason; he adopted, if he did not make, a revolution. He sent his
lawful monarch into exile; he prevented the placing the crown on the
head of his grandson; he for ever severed France from its lawful
sovereigns. What has been the result of his usurpation? Where are now
his enduring projects, his family alliances, his vast army, his
consolidated power? During seventeen years he laboured with
indefatigable industry and great ability to establish his newly acquired
authority, and secure, by the confirmation of his own power, the
perpetual exile of the lawful sovereign of France. Loud and long was the
applause at first bestowed by the liberal party in Europe on the
usurpation; great was the triumph of the bourgeoisie in every state at
seeing a lawful monarch overturned by a well-concerted urban revolt, and
the National converted into a Prætorian Guard, which could dispose of
crowns at pleasure. But meanwhile the justice of Heaven neither
slumbered nor slept. The means taken by Louis Philippe to consolidate
his power, and which were in truth the only ones that remained at his
disposal, consummated his ruin. His steady adherence to peace
dissatisfied the ardent spirits which sought for war; his firm internal
government disconcerted the republicans; his vast internal expenditure
drew after it a serious embarrassment of finance. He could not appeal to
the loyal feelings of the generous, for he was a usurper; he could not
rest on the support of the multitude, for they would have driven the
state to ruin; he could not rally the army round his throne, for they
would have impelled him into war. Thus he could rest only on the selfish
interests; and great was the skill with which he worked on that powerful
principle in human affairs. But a government which stands on selfish
feelings alone is a castle built on sand; the first wind of adversity
levels it with the dust. Napoleon’s throne was founded on this
principle, for he sacrificed to warlike selfishness; Louis Philippe on
the same, for he sacrificed to pacific selfishness. Both have undergone
the stern but just law of retribution. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth, has been meted out to both. To Napoleon, who had sent so many
foreign princes into banishment, and subverted so many gallant states, a
defeat in the field, a melancholy exile, and unbefriended death, in a
foreign land; to Louis Philippe, who had dethroned his lawful sovereign,
and carried the standard of treason into the halls of the Tuilleries,
the fate which he allotted to Charles X., that of being expelled with
still greater ignominy from the _same halls_, being compelled to eat the
bread of the stranger, and see his dynasty driven from their usurped
throne amidst the derision and contempt of mankind.
“If absolute power,” says M. De Tocqueville, “shall re-establish itself
in whatever hands, in any of the democratic states of Europe, I have no
doubt it will assume a form unknown to our fathers. When the great
families and the spirit of clanship prevailed, the individual who had to
contend with tyranny never found himself alone—he was supported by his
clients, his relations, his friends. But when the estates are divided,
and races confounded, where shall we find the spirit of family? What
form will remain in the influences of habit among a people changing
perpetually, where every act of tyranny will find a precedent in
previous disorders, where every crime can be justified by an example;
where nothing exists of sufficient antiquity to render its destruction
an object of dread, and nothing can be figured so new that men are
afraid to engage in it? What resistance would manners afford which have
already received so many shocks? What would public opinion do, when
twenty persons do not exist bound together by any common tie; when you
can no more meet with a man, a family, a body corporate, or a class of
society, which could represent or act upon that opinion; where each
citizen is equally poor, equally impotent, equally isolated, _and can
only oppose his individual weakness to the organised strength of the
Central Government_? To figure any thing equal TO THE DESPOTISM which
would then be established amongst us, we would require to recur not to
our own annals; we would be forced to go back to those frightful periods
of tyranny, when, manners being corrupted, old recollections effaced,
habits destroyed, opinions wavering, liberty deprived of its asylum
under the laws, men made a sport of the people, and princes wore out the
clemency of heaven rather than the patience of their subjects. They are
blind indeed who look for democratic equality in the monarchy of Henry
IV. and Louis XIV.”[14] What a commentary on this terrible prophecy have
recent events supplied! The revolutionists say, that France is entering
the last phase of the revolution.—It is true, it is entering it; but it
is the last phase of punishment to which it is blindly hurrying. The
sins of the fathers are about to be visited on the third generation. To
talk of real freedom, stable institutions, protected industry, social
happiness, in such a country, is out of the question. With their own
hands, in the first great convulsion, they destroyed all the bulwarks of
freedom in the land, and nothing remains to them, after the madness of
socialism has run its course, but the equality of despotism. They have
thrown off the laws of God and man, and Providence will leave their
punishment to their own hands. “The Romans,” says Gibbon, “aspired to be
equal: they were levelled _by the equality of Asiatic bondage_.”
Amidst so many mournful subjects of contemplation, there is one
consideration which forces itself upon the view, of great importance in
the present condition of this country. This revolution in France being a
revolt of labour against capital, its first principle is a _deadly
hostility to the principle of free-trade_. The recent barbarous
expulsion of the English labourers from France, several thousands in
number, after having enriched the country by their labour, and taught it
by their example, proves what sympathy foreign industry meets with from
the great and _fraternising_ republic. The confiscation of their
hard-won earnings by the cessation of the savings’ banks to pay more
than a tenth in cash, shows what they have to expect from the justice
and solvency of its government. With the rise of the communist and
socialist party in France to power, whose abomination is capital, whose
idol is labour, it may with certainty be predicted that the _sternest
and most unbending prohibition of British goods will immediately be
adopted by the great philanthropic and fraternising republic_. All other
countries which follow in any degree the example of the great parent
republic, by the popularising of their institutions, will, from the
influence of the labour party, do the same. America already draws
nineteen million dollars, or nearly £4,000,000 sterling, from its
imports, the greater part of which is a direct tax levied on the
industry of this country. Reciprocity, always one-sided, will ere long
be absolutely isolated. We shall be,
“Penitus divisos orbe Britannos,”
even more by our policy than our situation.
What chance there is of free-trade doctrines being adopted by the
present socialist and free-trade government in France, may be judged of
by the following quotation from the _Constitutionnel_:—
“Is not, in fact, the consumer, such as the free-traders represent him
to us, a strange creation? He is, as he has been wittily described, a
fantastic being—a monster who has a mouth and a stomach to consume
produce, but who has neither legs to move nor arms to work. We do not
fear that the operative classes will suffer themselves to be seduced
by those doctrines. We are aware that they have constantly rejected
them through the organs of the press more especially charged with the
defence of their interests; but it behoves them likewise that the
Provisional Government should remain on its guard against principles
which _would be still more disastrous under existing circumstances_.
M. Bethmont, the minister of commerce, has declared, in a letter
addressed by him to the association for the defence of national
labour, that he would never grant facilities of which the consequences
would be calculated to injure our manufacturers. We see by this
declaration that the dispositions of the Provisional Government are
good. The very inquiry which is now being held to devise means to
ameliorate the moral and material condition of the operatives, ought
to confirm the government in the necessity of maintaining the system
_which protects industry_. Let us inquire what the consequence would
be, in fact, if we were so imprudent as to suffer foreign produce to
enter France free of duty. Political economy teaches us that wages
find their balance in consequence of the competition existing between
nations; but they find their equilibrium by falling, and not by
rising. If that were not the case, there would be no possibility of
maintaining the struggle. Now, if we opened our ports, this cruel
necessity would become the more imperious for us, as, being placed
opposite to England in conditions of inferiority, greater in respect
to capital, to the means of transport, and to the price of matters of
the first necessity, we could not redeem those disadvantages except by
a reduction of wages. This, in fact, would be the annihilation of the
operative.”—_Constitutionnel_, March 16, 1848.
This is the inevitable result of republican and socialist triumph in the
neighbouring kingdom, and the impulse given to liberal institutions, an
inlet thereby opened to manufacturing jealousy all over the world.
Debarred thus from all possibility of reciprocal advantages; shut out
for ever from the smallest benefit in return, is it expedient for Great
Britain to continue any longer her concessions to foreign industry, or
incur the blasting imputation of a suicidal policy towards her own
inhabitants in favour of ungrateful and selfish foreigners, who meet
concessions with prohibition, and industrial teaching with savage
expulsion from the instructed territory.
“No revolution,” says Madame de Staël, “can succeed in any country,
unless it is headed by a portion of the higher, and the majority of the
middle classes.” Recent events have afforded another to the many
confirmations which history affords of this important observation. Had
the National Guard of Paris stood firm, the troops of the line would
never have wavered; the government would not have been intimidated; a
socialist revolution would have been averted; public credit preserved;
the savings’ bank, the place of deposit of the poor—the public funds,
the investment of the middle classes—saved from destruction. When we
contemplate the dreadful monetary crisis which has been brought on in
France by the revolution; when we behold the bank of France suspending
payments, and all the chief banks of the metropolis rendered bankrupt by
the shock; when we behold wealth in ship-loads flying from its menaced
shores, and destitution in crowds stalking through its crowded and idle
streets, we are struck with horror, and impressed with a deeper sense of
thankfulness at the good sense and patriotic spirit of the middle
classes in this country, which has so quickly crushed the efforts of the
seditious to involve us in similar calamities. “The unbought loyalty of
men,—the cheap defence of nations,”—still, thank God! subsists amongst
us. The poison of infidelity has not destroyed the moral bonds of
society—the rolling-stone of revolution has not crushed the institutions
of freedom amongst us. There are hearts to love their country—arms to
defend their Queen—not less among our civil than our military defenders.
The pillage of Glasgow on the first outbreak of the disturbances there,
their speedy suppression, by the energy of the inhabitants, has not been
lost on the empire. It is not in vain that twenty thousand constables
came forward to be enrolled in one day in Glasgow, and eleven thousand
in Manchester. We see what we have to expect from the seditious; they
see what they have to expect from the middle classes of society, and the
whole virtuous part of the lower. With such dispositions in both, Great
Britain may be exposed to local disorder or momentary alarm, but it can
never be seriously endangered, or undergo that worst of horrors—a social
revolution. Nor will she, with such dispositions in her people, be less
prepared to assert the ancient glory of her arms, should circumstances
render that alternative necessary. She has no internal reforms to make
that she cannot achieve peaceably, by the means which her constitution
affords. Her giant strength slumbers, not sleeps. Our ships of war, in
the noble words of Mr Canning, “how soon one of those stupendous masses,
now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness,—how soon, upon any
call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an
animated thing, instinct with life and motion—how soon it would ruffle,
as it were, its swelling plumage—how quickly it would put forth all its
beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and
awaken its dormant thunder!”—how soon would the flag of Waterloo again
be unfurled to the breeze!
A GERMAN DITTY.
The following is a very loose imitation of a popular German air.
While life’s early friends still surround us,
Yet another bright hour let us pass,
And wake the old rafters around us
With the song and the circling glass.
For it cannot thus long hold together
Here under the changeable moon;
To bloom for a time, then to wither,
Is the lot of all, later or soon.
Then here’s to the many good fellows
Who before us have tippled and laugh’d;
Be they under the turf or the billows,
To them let this goblet be quaff’d.
That if, after us, others as merry
Shall keep up as joyous a train,
One bumper of port or of sherry
To us in our turn they may drain—
As they keep up the charter of joyance,
As by us was maintain’d in our day;
Not to drown dull care and annoyance,
Not ignobly to moisten our clay;—
But to raise an extempore shrine,
Where Momus, revisiting earth,
May find humour and whim yet divine,
And the glorious spirit of mirth.
For ’twas not we were reckless of duty,
Or the sterner requirements of life;
’Twas not we were mindless of beauty,
Or are now, of home, children, and wife;
But ’tis,—that the wandering hours
Have a singular frolicsome way
Of scattering the fairest of flowers
O’er moments of fellowship gay;
When fancy leads off to a measure
That youth might mistake for its own,
As its wont were to seek after pleasure,
With feeling and wit for its tone;
And so vivid and bright the ideal
Her fairy-light shows us the while,
That wisdom asks nothing more real,
And genius applauds with a smile.
MAC.
TWO SONNETS.
BY GEORGE HUNTLY GORDON.
MONT BLANC.
AN IMAGINARY SONNET, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, WHILE COMPOSING HIS SWISS
STORY, ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN.
[When Captain Sherwill and Dr Edmund Clark ascended to the summit of
Mont Blanc, they were much surprised to observe the greater apparent
distance and feebler splendour of the moon and stars. “The cloudless
canopy of heaven was of a very dark blue, but with a slight
reddishness in the tinge, so as rather to resemble a beautiful deep
violet than indigo.... The vault of heaven appeared prodigiously
high and distant. After two days’ march upward, _the blue expanse
seemed to have receded from us much faster than we had climbed
towards it_.... Perhaps there are few phenomena (adds Dr Clark,) so
calculated to take an impressive hold of the imagination.”]
When bold Emprise, by thrilling hopes and fears
Alternate sway’d, hath each dread peril pass’d,
And Mont Blanc’s snow-bound summit reach’d at last;
Remoter shine th’ eternal starry spheres,
More distant walks the moon ‘mid darkest blue,
Heaven’s cloudless dome dilates, and higher seems;
And way-worn pilgrim sees, with wond’ring view,
Each star decline, and pale its wonted beams!
So, when Ambition hath from life’s low vale
Our footsteps lured, when, danger’s path defied,
We’ve gain’d at length, with fortune’s fav’ring gale,
The “promised land,”—the pinnacle of pride,—
The phantom BLISS thus mocks our cheated eyes,
For, as we mount, the dear delusion flies!
TO ——.
Meekness, Sincerity, and Candour, seem
Enshrined in that sweet smile, and calm, clear brow;
Nor less within thy blue eye’s witching beam,
Affection warm, and Sympathy with wo;
Goodness and Grace ineffable illume
Thy mien:—when Music melts thy thrilling tone,
How could my heart its magic pow’r disown?
Thy siren strains oft snatch me from the gloom,
The dream-like forms, the anguish, and turmoil,
That haunt the PAST. Alas! too soon again—
As on yon stormy strand the seas recoil,
Some weed sweeps back into its wave-worn den[15]—
Wild Mem’ry’s spells resume their wonted might,
And sternly shroud me from thy world of light!
MY ROUTE INTO CANADA.
NO. II.
Lake Champlain was long known to the Dutch, and through them to the
English, as the Lake of Corlaer. It seems that one Corlaer was for a
long time the great man of a little Dutch settlement on the Mohawk,
where for many years he swayed the civic sword so potently and with such
terror to evil-doers among the Indians, that they adopted his name into
their language to signify a white governor. This doughty Dutchman,
therefore, left the title to his successors, and the Corlaers went
through their decline and fall with as much dignity, in a small way, as
history ascribes to the Pharaohs and the Cæsars. Like the founders of
other dynasties, however, the original Van Corlaer came to a remarkable
and tragic end; and as this deplorable event took place on the Lake, now
known by the name of Champlain, the Dutch stubbornly regarded their own
hero as having the best right to name it. For a time it seemed likely
that fortune would decide for the Dutch; but, with a fickleness for
which the flirt is proverbial, she suddenly declared for the French
claim; and time having ratified the award, the name of Corlaer is no
more heard among mortals, except when some one of antiquarian tastes,
like myself, discovers, with a meditative sigh, that it once could start
a ghost as soon as Cæsar, and come very near being “writ in water,”
which, strange to say, would have rendered it immortal.
It seems that in those days there was, somewhere in the lake, a
remarkable rock which the Mohawks regarded as the dome of a submarine
palace, in which dwelt with his mermaids a wicked old Indian enchanter,
who ruled over Boreas and Euroclydon. The superstition was quite
coincident in its particulars with the more classical and familiar one
which is served up in the story of Æneas: but this mischievous king of
the winds had the merit of being easily propitiated; and the Indians, as
they timidly passed his stronghold, never failed to send down to him the
tributary peace offering of a pipe, an arrow, or any thing else, save
their bottles of fire-water, of which the old fellow was dexterously
cheated. The doughty Van Corlaer, undertaking a voyage to the north, was
duly informed of these facts; but he swore “by stone and bone” that he
would not pay the tribute, or ask any one’s permission to navigate the
lake. I am sorry to add that he would not be argued out of his rash and
inconsiderate vow. Tradition relates that, as he approached the rock,
his mariners showed signs of fear, which appeared so puerile and idle to
the enlarged soul of the hero, that he on the contrary steered close to
the fearful citadel, and, shamefully exposing his person, made an
unseemly gesture towards the abode of the Indian Æolus, and added some
Dutch formula of defiance. It is almost needless to relate that the
wrath of his ventose majesty was greatly excited. He scorned, indeed, to
make a tempest about it; but despatching several angry little squalls
after the insolent admiral, they bored him fore and aft, and beset him
from so many quarters at once, in a narrow gorge of the lake, that, in
short, he was effectually swamped, and thus made a warning example to
all succeeding Van Corlaers. His name, as I said, was for a while
bequeathed to the lake; but even this poor recompense for a disaster so
terrible has proved as evanescent as the bubbles, in which the last sigh
of the unfortunate Dutchman came up from the caves to which, like the
great Kempenfelt, he went down in a moment.
The lake, therefore, retains its Gallic appellation, and preserves the
name and memory of Samuel de Champlain, a servant of Henry IV., and
justly surnamed the father of _La Nouvelle France_. The expedition in
which it first received his name was a romantic one, and so well
illustrates what I have already said of the border feuds of the
seventeenth century, that I must be excused for relating its story.
Champlain had come down to the shores of the lake with a party of
Adirondacks, and was advancing through the forest towards the lands of
the Iroquois, when suddenly they came in sight of a strong party of that
nation, who showed no disposition to decline an encounter. On the
contrary, setting up their warwhoop, they advanced pell-mell to the
attack. The Frenchmen, betaking themselves to an ambuscade, made ready
to receive them with their fusils; while their savage allies awaited the
foe with their usual coolness and contempt of danger. The Iroquois were
the more numerous, and, elated by their apparent superiority, came down
with the sweeping violence of a whirlwind. The Adirondacks seemed in
their eyes as chaff; and with howls and hatchets they were just pouncing
upon their prey, when the blazing fusils of Champlain and his comrades
laid the foremost of the Iroquois warriors in the dust. The remainder
fled into the wilderness with the most frantic outcries of astonishment
and despair. It was the first volley of fire-arms that ever reached the
ear or the heart of an Iroquois—the first that ever startled the echoes
of that lake, which was so soon destined to tremble beneath the
bellowing thunders of navies. They were defeated they knew not how; but
they retired to the depths of the forest, muttering the deadliest vows
of revenge. It so happened that another collision of the same kind
occurred soon after on the Saurel—a little river, much broken by rapids,
through which the waters of the lake make their way to the sea. There
was among the Algonquins a bold and dashing chief whose name was
Pisquaret. He had made an incursion against the Iroquois, and was laden
with the scalps which he had taken from an Indian village which he
surprised at night and completely destroyed. As he was navigating the
rapids of the Saurel with his Adirondacks and several Frenchmen, he was
surprised by a powerful armament of Iroquois, who immediately bore down
upon him, with great advantage from the current. The treacherous
Algonquins feigned to give themselves up for lost, and, setting up the
death-song of the Adirondacks, appeared to await their inevitable fate.
The Frenchmen, throwing themselves flat in the batteaux, and resting the
muzzles of their carbines upon the gunnels, coolly calculated the
effects of the coming discharge; but Pisquaret and his warriors raised
their voices in chanting the victories of their tribe, inflaming the
Iroquois by vaunts of injuries which they had done them, and defying
them in return not to spare any torture in seeing how the Algonquins
could die. The exasperated foe was just pealing the war-cry, when the
deadly blaze of the carbines changed their exultation in a moment to
howls of agony and dismay. But these were tricks which could not be
repeated; and, long after, the empire of the Grande Monarque paid dearly
for these frolics in the unpruned wilderness. Those who are fond of
tracing the greatest political events and changes to accidents
inconsiderable in themselves, have maintained that the first volley of
fire-arms that startled the echoes of Lake Champlain, decided the fate
and fixed the limits of French dominion in America. Nor is this theory
to be lightly dismissed as fanciful; for it cannot be doubted that the
subsequent spread of the Anglo-Saxon race over the hunting-grounds of
the Mohawks, and through them to the further west, was owing to the
favourable treaties which the English were able to effect with the
Iroquois in the days of their power,—treaties which, had they been
secured by the French, would have opened the whole region now called New
York to their countrymen, and filled it with a mongrel population under
the absolute control of Jesuits and political adventurers. Nor can any
thing be ascertained more decisive of what was at first a game and a
problem, than the collisions I have described. The Iroquois soon found
out the secret of their discomfiture, and associated the name of a
Frenchman with that of the Algonquins in their inveterate hatred. And
when they in turn found Pale-faces to seek their alliance, and supply
them with arms, they became the barrier of British enterprise against
the encroachments of France; and so it was that the beautiful vale of
Mohawk, the shores of Erie and Ontario, and the rugged mountains of
Vermont, came to be filled with the sons of Englishmen, and not with the
dwarfish overgrowth of the French Canadian provinces. The laws, civil
institutions, and the religion of England thus found a footing in that
great territory, which, as more or less influencing all the other
members of the American confederacy, is called the empire state:—and
perhaps the bells that ring for the English service throughout that
region would have been tolling for the Latin mass, but for those early
encounters on the shores of Lake Champlain.
Our delay at Whitehall was owing to a blunder of Freke’s. He had assured
us that we would certainly arrive in time to take the steamer down the
lake to St John’s; but it had been several hours on its way when we
arrived at the inn. Since the burning of a steamer several years before,
there had been but one on these waters; and as it was now on its
downward trip, it could not again leave Whitehall for several days. Here
was a pretty mess for some half-dozen of us!
There was nothing for us but bedtime; and poor enough beds it brought
us. I was up before the sun had found a chance to send a squint into the
town over its rocky eastern wall; and I wonder not that the sun is slow
to visit it, for it is altogether a disagreeable hole. For this I was
unprepared. Whitehall hath a royal prestige, and the notion of the head
of a lake had given me the pleasing expectation of a picturesque little
harbour, and a romantic water view. There is nothing of the sort. The
harbour is well called the basin; and Wood-creek, the canal, and the
lake, just here, are all ditches together. Vessels of different sorts
and sizes lie huddled and crowded at their confluence, and the waters
are precisely of the colour of _café-au-lait_! Shade of merry Charles,
how came they to change Skenesborough into Whitehall?
I have compared the ditch-water to _café-au-lait_; but all I can say of
my breakfast is, that its coffee was not comparable to ditch-water.
Freke was despatched to look us out a vessel willing to take us any
where, for staying here was out of the question. He had given us the
Indian name of the place as _Kaw-ko-kaw-na_, assuring us that this
euphonious polysyllable was good Iroquois for _the place where they
catch fish_. This little item of knowledge proved to us a dangerous
thing, for it suggested a fishing excursion to fill up the hours of
Freke’s anticipated absence. We rowed ourselves for some distance along
a narrow channel, with marshes on both sides, which looked like the
stronghold of that cohort of agues and fevers which, since the days of
Prometheus, have delighted in burning and shaking the race of mortals.
Wood-creek throws itself into the basin with a foaming cataract of
waters; and beyond the marshes are precipitous walls of rocks, that
confine the view. These rocks they call the Heights; and I doubt not
they would look well at a distance, but the mischief is, there is no
viewing them in so favourable a way. They rise like a natural Bastile,
and so near your nose, that your only prospect is perpendicular; and you
are consequently obliged to think more of your nose than the prospect.
In the moonlight, the evening before, I did think there was something
magnificent about the Heights; but this impression, like other visions
of the night, did not survive the daybreak. I should think a geologist
or a stone-mason might find them interesting; and an unprincipled
inhabitant of Whitehall, out of patience with life in such a place, or
emulous of the Lesbian Sappho, would doubtless find them suitable to the
nefarious purpose of breaking his neck. This is all I can say for them;
and as for the fishing excursion, we soon gave it up, and paddled back
to the quay, out of patience with Freke for his instructions in Indian
philology, and heartily tired of attempting to catch fish in
Kaw-ko-kaw-na.
Freke, for once in his life, had been employed to some purpose. He met
us on the quay, and immediately conducted us to a gay little sloop, to
which he had already transferred our luggage, and which was ready for a
start down the lake to Plattsburgh. We were introduced to a raw-boned,
barethroated Vermonter as “Captain Pusher,” and, ratifying the bargain
of our commissary, were soon snugly on board his vessel; of which I
regret that I forget the name, though I distinctly remember the letters
that shone on the painted sterns we passed—such as the Macdonough, the
Congress, the Green-Mountain-Boy, and the Lady of the Lake. Whatever was
its name, its deck contained several baskets of vegetables and joints of
meat, which gave us promise of a good dinner; and scarcely were we under
weigh, before Sambo the cook began to pare turnips, and grin from ear to
ear over savoury collops of mutton, which he was submitting to some
incipient process of cookery.
We were favoured with a good breeze; but the channel of which I have
spoken seemed to drag its length like an Alexandrine. We reached a place
where it is so narrow, and makes an angle so abrupt, that there is a
contrivance on the bank which steamers are obliged to employ in turning.
It is best described by the name which has been given to it by the
sailors, from
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,
Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,
Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
They call it the Fiddler’s Elbow; and as it seems the limit of
Whitehall, we were glad to double the cape as speedily as possible. A
squadron of ducks that were puddling in the dirty water of the marshes
gave point to a quotation from Voltaire, with which one of our company
paid his parting compliments to _Kaw-ko-kaw-na_, as its author did to
Holland—_Adieu! canards, canailles, canaux._
After clearing this place, we found an object of interest in the
decaying hulks of the two flotillas that came to an engagement in
Plattsburgh bay, in the year 1814. The British and America galleys lay
there rotting together, with many marks of the sharp action in which
they had well borne their part. The more imposing proportions of Captain
Downie’s flag-ship the Confiance arrested our particular attention. She
was a sheer hulk, charred and begrimed by fire, and a verdant growth of
grass was sprouting from her seams and honourable scars. A few years
before, she was a gallant frigate, cruising upon the open lake, and
bearing proudly in the fight the red-cross of St George. Her commander
fell upon her deck in the first moment of the action; and after a fierce
engagement, during which she received 105 round-shot in her hull, she
was surrendered. There was something in the sight of these rival
squadrons thus rotting side by side, that might have inspired a
moralist. How many brave fellows that once trode their decks were
likewise mouldering in the dust of death! But in another view of the
matter there was something inspiring. They were a witness of peace
between the two nations who hold Lake Champlain between them; and long
may it be before either shall wish to recall them from the nothingness
into which they have long since crumbled!
The lake becomes gradually wider, and though not remarkable for beauty,
affords scenes to engage the eye and occupy the mind. It is rather river
scenery, than what we naturally associate with lakes. On the left are
the mountain ridges that divide its waters from those of Lake George; on
the right, is the rocky boundary of Vermont. The lake occupies the whole
defile, lying very nearly due north and south. As we approached
Ticonderoga, the region became more mountainous, and the view was
consequently more attractive. Before us on the east was Mount
Independence, and just opposite, on the west, rose the bold height of
Mount Defiance, completely covering the fortress, which we knew lurked
behind it to the north. By the help of a good wind, we were not long in
reaching the spot where the outlet of Lake George debouches. It comes
into Lake Champlain, apparently from the north-west, at the foot of
Mount Defiance; the lake making a bend and winding eastward; and between
the lake and the outlet, on a sloping and partially wooded promontory of
some hundred feet in height, rise the rough but picturesque ruins of
Ticonderoga. They present an appearance not usual in American scenery;
and having every charm of association which Indian, French, British, and
patriotic warfare can throw around such places, are naturally enough
endeared to Americans, and gratifying to the curiosity of travellers.
This fortress was originally built by the French, in 1756; and
subsequently, until the ascent of Mount Defiance by Burgoyne proved its
exposure to attack on that point, it was contested, captured, and
recaptured, and held by French, English, and Americans, as a stronghold
of mastery and power. It commanded the avenue to the Hudson, and the
pass to Lake George. The name Ticonderoga, in which every ear must
detect a significant beauty, is said to denote, in the Indian dialect,
the noise of the cataracts in the outlet; but the French called the fort
Carillon, and afterwards Vaudreuil, in honour of one of their governors
in Acadie, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. In 1757, when Montcalm (who fell in
the defence of Quebec two years afterwards) was making his expedition
against the English forts on Lake George, he remained at this place
awaiting that powerful reinforcement of savages, whose treachery and
thirst for blood rendered the campaign so lamentably memorable. To one
who stands, as I did, on that beautiful peninsula, and surveys the quiet
scene of land and water—sails betokening civilised commerce, and a
trading village in Vermont, exhibiting every mark of prosperous
thrift—it seems incredible that within the lifetime of persons yet
surviving, that very scene was alive with savage nations who called it
their own, and gave it to whom they would; but of whom nothing remains
but wild traditions, and the certainty that they have been. Yet, only
forty-three years before British and American flotillas were contending
for this lake, in sight of a village with spires, and with none other
than civilised arts of war, the same waters were covered with two
hundred canoes of Nipistingues, Abnakis, Amenekis, and Algonquins,
paddling their way to the massacre of a British force in a fortress at
the head of Lake George. From Father Roubaud, a Jesuit priest who
accompanied them, the particulars of that expedition have been handed
down. He describes the savages as bedaubed with green, yellow, and
vermillion; adorned with glistening ornaments, the gifts of their
allies; their heads shaven, saving their scalp-locks, which rose from
their heads like crests, stiffened with tallow, and decorated with beads
and feathers; their chiefs bedizened with finery, and each nation
embarked under wild but appropriate ensigns. Such were the Christians
with whom Father Roubaud travelled as chaplain, and whom he led against
his fellow Christians like another Peter the Hermit pursuing Turks. It
is the plague of Popery that it often expends itself in inspiring the
deepest religious sentiment, without implanting the least religious
principle. The Italian bandit kneels at a wayside crucifix, to praise
God and the Virgin for the plunder he has taken with bloodshed; the
Irish priest, at the altar, devotes to death his unoffending neighbours,
with the very lips which, as he believes, have just enclosed the soul,
body, and divinity of the world’s Redeemer; and the Jesuit missionary of
New France had no scruple in consecrating with the most awful rites of
religion, an expedition whose object was the scalps of baptised men, and
whose results were the massacre of women and children. The holy father
himself is particular to relate the fact that he celebrated a mass
before the embarkation, for the express purpose of securing the Divine
blessing, and he compliments the fervour with which the savages assisted
at the solemnity! He had described the English to them as a race of
blasphemers, and they, at least, were not to blame for embarking in the
spirit of crusaders “against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens.” Daily,
for a whole week, as the armament advanced, did the wily Jesuit land
them on one of the many isles that gem the lower waters of Lake
Champlain, on purpose to renew the august sacrament of the altar before
their eyes: and he describes these savages as chanting the praises of
the Lamb of God, with a fervour from which he augured the consummation
of their character as Christians. At the end of a week, they descried
with joy the French lilies as they waved over the walls of Carillon; and
in order to make their approach more imposing, they immediately arranged
their canoes under their ensigns, and advanced in battle array. From the
height on which I stood, Montcalm beheld his allies, on a bright July
morning, their hatchets and tomahawks gleaming in the sun; their
standards and scalp-locks fluttering in the breeze; and their thousand
paddles hurrying them through the waves of that beautiful water: such a
sight as no eye will ever see again. To a nobleman fresh from the
gallantries of Versailles, it must have been a spectacle full of wild
and romantic interest; and the picture is altogether such a one as any
imagination may delight to reproduce. Yet, when we reflect that it is
even now but fourscore years and ten since such a scene was a terrible
reality, how striking the reflection that it has as absolutely vanished
from the earth, beyond the possibility of revival, as the display of
tournaments, and the more formidable pageants of the Crusades.
The following year an expedition against this fort was made by the
gallant Abercrombie, who approached it from Lake George, and endeavoured
to take it by storm. It is commonly said that Lord Howe fell in this
assault before the walls; but in fact he fell the day before, while
leading an advanced guard through the forest. Ticonderoga was garrisoned
by about four thousand men—French, Canadians, and Indians—and their
entrenchments were defended by almost impregnable outworks. The British
troops nevertheless made the attack with the greatest intrepidity, and
in spite of a murderous fire, forced their way to the walls, and even
scaled them, to be immediately cut down. But after repeated assaults,
and the loss of two thousand men, General Abercrombie was forced to
desist from the attempt; and the French kept the post for a time. It of
course became English in the following year, when the French power in
America was destroyed by the taking of Quebec.
I have already referred to its seizure by the eccentric Ethan Allen, on
the breaking out of the American war in 1775. This officer was a native
of Vermont, who had been an infidel preacher, and was notorious as the
editor of the first deistical publication that ever issued from the
American press. The revolution was hardly begun, when the province of
Connecticut gave him a commission to capture Ticonderoga. With about
three hundred of his hardy “Green-mountain-boys,” he was hastening to
the spot, when he fell in with Arnold, bearing a similar commission from
Massachusetts. After some dispute as to the command, Allen was made
leader, and Arnold his assistant. They arrived by night on the Vermont
shore, opposite the fort. There they found a lad who had been accustomed
to visit the fort every day with provisions and pedlar’s wares, and
crossing by his directions, without noise, they were shown a secret and
covered entrance into the fort itself. Climbing up through this passage,
Allen led his men within the walls, and drew them up in the area of the
fortress, having silenced and disarmed the only sentry who guarded the
entrance. The commander of the post, who hardly knew there was war, was
actually startled from his sleep, by Allen’s demand for its surrender.
The drowsy officer inquired—“By what authority?” And was answered by
Allen, half in banter and half in bombastic earnest,—“In the name of the
Great Jehovah, and of the Continental Congress!” To one in his straits,
with a sword at his naked breast, such a reply, however unintelligible,
was sufficiently overpowering, and the post was surrendered without
resistance. Its reduction in 1777, by Burgoyne, has been already
described; but Ticonderoga is for ever endeared to Americans from the
fact, that the flag of their independence was so early given to the
breeze from its summit.
A guide, who called himself Enoch Gold, led me over the ruins. He
pretended to have been with St Clair, and to have seen Burgoyne and his
men on Mount Defiance. He showed us the way through which Allen gained
his entrance, and took us down into the vaults and magazines. A
subterranean apartment was shown as a kitchen, and the old fellow
declared he had eaten bread hot out of its ovens. We gave the
_soi-disant_ veteran the liberal rewards of a hero; but I suspect we
were paying him for his imagination, rather than for his hardships.
The shadows of the fortress were beginning to lengthen on the lake
before we returned to our bark. The mountains of Vermont, which are
mostly well wooded, looked brightly green in the broad sunshine, and
tempted us to wish we had time for an excursion to their heights. It was
afterwards my happiness to go into Vermont, on a visit to Lake Dunmore,
which lies among its mountains, and supplies delicious fish. I found it
a truly Arcadian region, abounding with streams and pasturages, and rich
in flocks and herds. It breeds a rugged race of men, with some
characteristics decidedly Swiss. It is said, indeed, that a Switzer, who
had come to settle in America, preferred these diminutive Alps, with
their lakes and mountaineer population, to any other part of the
country; and, fixing his dwelling accordingly, soon ceased to be
home-sick, and sigh at the _ranz des vaches_.
Crown Point, the twin sister of Ticonderoga, is only ten miles beyond;
but we did not reach it as soon as we had expected, for the wind had
changed, and we were obliged to tack. Every now and then, the man at the
helm, which was our gallant captain himself, would cry out,—“Heads!” and
the boom would come sweeping across the deck, with woe to the head that
wore a hat, or did not bow soon enough to save it. Several times I
expected to see our friend Freke carried overboard bodily, and engulfed
like another Corlaer; for so profoundly was he engaged with his cigar,
as he sat, or rather squatted, on the hatches, that the captain’s
monotonous warning failed to alarm him till the whole company had echoed
“Heads!” and, with other demonstrations of affectionate solicitude,
forced him to fall on all-fours.
At Crown Point the lake greatly improves. The water appears much
clearer, and the width of the lake is nearly if not quite fourfolded. It
continues to expand till it becomes ten or twelve miles in breadth, and
islands begin to be numerous. To the northward the higher peaks of the
Green Mountains stretch away with magnificent outlines; and on the west,
a bleak and craggy range of hills, which are said to harbour even yet
the wolf and the bear, approach, and then recede from the shore. Here,
as early as 1731, the French built Fort Frederick, as the first move
towards the seizure and claim of the whole surrounding territory; and
from this point they made their bloody and atrocious incursions into New
England, and towards the Mohawk, or dismissed their hireling savages to
do it for them. The recesses of Fort Frederick are believed to have
rivalled the dungeons of the Inquisition in scenes of misery and crime.
In its gloomy cells were plotted the inhuman massacres which drenched
the American settlements in blood. There, it is said, the Indian
butchers received their commissions to burn, tomahawk, and scalp; and
there, in the presence of Jesuit fathers, or at least with their
connivance, was the gleaming gold counted down to the savages in return
for their infernal trophies of success; the silvery locks of the aged
colonist, the clotted tresses of women, and the crimsoned ringlets of
the child. In 1759 this detestable hold of grasping and remorseless
tyranny was blown up, and abandoned by the French to General Amherst.
Soon after, the British Government began to erect a fortification in the
vicinity of the ruins, and a noble work it was; though it proved of no
use at all, after the enormous sum of two millions sterling had been
expended on its walls of granite, and ditches blasted in the solid rock.
The exploits of Arnold and Sir Guy Carleton in this vicinity have been
already described. Since the close of the war of the Revolution, the
costly works at Crown Point have been suffered to fall into decay; and
they are now piles of ruin, covered with weeds, among which the red
berries of the sumach are conspicuously beautiful in their time.
Though “Captain Pusher” made a landing at this point to procure a little
milk for our tea, we did not go ashore, and were soon on our way once
more with a freer prospect, and perhaps with somewhat expanded spirits.
The setting sun, in the clear climate of America, is in fair weather
almost always beautiful; and my recollections of the rosy and purple
tints with which it adorned the feathery flakes of cloud that floated
around the peaks of the Green Mountains, are to this day almost as
bright in memory as when they first made my heart leap up to behold them
in the soft summer sky of Vermont. As the lake grew wider and the
darkness deeper, there was of course less and less to be seen; and the
noble scenery at Burlington, where the width of the lake is greatest,
and the shores assume a bolder and higher character of beauty, was to
our great regret unavoidably passed in the night. Still, there is
something in starlight upon the waters, in new and romantic regions,
which peculiarly inspires me. The same constellations which one has long
been accustomed to view in familiar scenes and associations, come out
like old friends in the heavens of strange and untried lands; shining
witnesses to the brotherhood of differing nations, and to the impartial
benevolence and unsleeping love of God. But I have no reason to regret
that the only night I ever passed on Lake Champlain was mostly spent in
watching; for long before I was tired of gazing at Orion and the
Pleiads, I was rewarded by the sight of one of the most splendid auroras
that I ever beheld. In a moment, the whole northern heaven was
illuminated with columnar light; and the zenith seemed to rain it down,
so to speak—while the surface of the lake reflecting it, gave us, to our
own eyes, the appearance of sailing in some bright fluid, midway between
a vault and an abyss of fire. This display of glory continued to flash
and quiver above us for several hours. There were, in quick succession,
sheets and spires and pencils of variegated light, rolling and
tremulous, wavy and flame-like, blazoning heaven’s azure with something
like heraldic broidery and colours. Towards morning, the intense cold
and heavy mountain dews drove me for a season to my berth; but I was on
deck again in time to see the moon make her heliacal rising over the
eastern peaks, in the wan paleness of her last quarter. The approach of
day was attended with a fog; but it soon thinned off, and we made
Plattsburgh in good time. Here we parted with our vessel, and her worthy
commander; and though we neither gave him a piece of plate nor voted him
an accomplished gentleman, we left him with such wishes as, if they have
been fulfilled, have long since removed him from the helm of his sloop,
and the waters of Lake Champlain, to a snug little cot at Burlington,
and the company of any number of rosy little Green-Mountain boys and
their interesting mother.
Plattsburgh is situated on the western bank of the lake, just where the
crescent shore of a bold peninsula begins to curve round a broad
semicircular bay, several miles in circumference, and of liberal depth.
Here the American squadron, under Commodore Macdonough, was anchored on
the 11th of September 1814, in order to assist the land forces under
General Macomb, in repelling an expected attack from the British troops
under Sir George Prevost. The English flotilla had been ordered up from
the Isle-aux-Noix to engage Macdonough, and divert his fire from the
shore; and accordingly, at about eight o’clock in the morning, was seen
off the peninsula of Cumberland Head, and hailed by both armies with
vociferous acclamations. The cannonade instantly began from the ships
and on the land, and for two hours and twenty minutes the naval
engagement was continued with the most stubborn resolution on both
sides. Though the battle on shore was sorely contested, the action
between the squadrons was anxiously watched by both armies, and by
thousands of deeply interested spectators, who surveyed the field and
the fleets from the neighbouring heights. Macdonough’s flag-ship, the
Saratoga, was twice on fire; and though Downie had fallen in the first
moment of the conflict, the Confiance had succeeded in dismantling all
the starboard guns of her antagonist, when the bower-cable of the
Saratoga was cut, and a stern-anchor dropped, on which she rounded to,
and presented a fresh broadside. The Confiance was unable to imitate
this manœuvre, and she was obliged to strike, the remainder of the
flotilla soon following her example. A few of the British galleys
escaped, but as there was not another mast standing in either fleet,
they could neither be followed by friends or by foes. The decision of
the contest was vociferously cheered from the shore; and Sir George,
perceiving the fate of his fleet, commenced a retreat, having suffered
the loss of nearly a thousand men. This brilliant action in Cumberland
Bay has made the name of Macdonough the pride and glory of Lake
Champlain; and deservedly so, for his professional merit appears to have
been no greater than his private worth. The brave but unfortunate
Downie, who, with a squadron wanting a full third of being as strong as
that of his antagonist, maintained this gallant contest, sleeps in a
quiet grave at Plattsburgh, under a simple monument erected by the
affection of a sister. He is always mentioned with respectful regret;
but Macdonough is, of course, the hero of every panegyric. An anecdote
which we heard at Whitehall gives me a higher opinion of the latter,
however, than all that has been justly said of his merits as an officer.
A few minutes before the action commenced, he caused his chaplain to
offer the appropriate prayers in the presence of all his fleet—the men
standing reverently uncovered, and the commander himself kneeling upon
the deck. An officer of the Confiance is said to have observed this
becoming, but somewhat extraordinary, devotion through his glass, and to
have reported it to Captain Downie, who seemed to be immediately struck
with a foreboding of the result. The sailors on our little sloop told us
another story of the action with great expressions of delight. It seems
the hen-coop of the Saratoga was struck in the beginning of the action,
and a cock becoming released flew into the rigging, and, flapping his
wings, crowed lustily through the fire and smoke. The gunners gave
chanticleer a hearty cheer, and taking the incident as an omen of
victory, stood to their guns with fresh spirit and enthusiasm. Smaller
things than this have turned the tide of battles far greater, and more
important to nations and the world.
We spent a day at Plattsburgh surveying the field and the fort, and
picking up stories of the fight. Relics of the battle were every where
visible; and grape-shot and cannon-balls were lying here and there in
the ditches. The evening was fair, and we drove out to an Indian
encampment on the peninsula, the first thing of the kind I ever beheld.
Entering one of the wigwams, or huts, I found the squaws engaged in
weaving small baskets of delicate withes of elm, dyed and stained with
brilliant vegetable-colours. An infant strapped to a flat board, and set
like a cane or umbrella against the stakes of the hut, was looking on
with truly Indian stoicism. The mother said her child never cried; but
whether it runs in the blood, or is the effect of discipline, is more
than I could learn. On the beach were canoes of bark, which had been
newly constructed by the men. A squaw, who desired us to purchase,
lifted one of them with her hand; yet it could have carried six or seven
men with safety on the lake. We observed that males and females alike
wore crucifixes, and were evidently Christians, however degraded and
ignorant. They spoke French, so as to be easily understood, and some
English. These poor and feeble creatures were the last of the Iroquois.
Next day, in post-coaches, we came into Canada. At St John’s, where we
dined, Freke boisterously drank to his Majesty. So deep were the loyal
feelings of our friend, however, that he continued his bumpers to “all
the royal family,” which, though not quite so great an achievement then
as it would be now, was quite sufficient to consign him to the
attentions of our host, where we left him without an adieu. We were much
amused by the novelties of our road, so decidedly Frenchified, and
unlike any thing in the States. Women, in the costume of French
peasants, were at work in the fields; and we saw one engaged in
bricklaying at the bottom of a ditch or cellar. The men in caps,
smock-frocks, and almost always with pipes in their mouths, drove by in
light _charettes_, or waggons with rails at the sides, drawn by stout
little ponies of a plump yet delicate build, and for cart-horses
remarkably fleet. For the first time in my life I observed also dogs
harnessed in the Esquimaux manner, and drawing miniature _charettes_,
laden with bark or faggots. Every thing reminded us that we were not in
England or America, but only in Acadie.
We were jaunting merrily along, when vociferous halloos behind us caused
our whip to pull up with a jerk. A Yorkshire man, in terror of footpads,
began to bellow _Drive on!_ and our heads were thrust forth in farcical
preparation for a stand-and-deliver assault, when a waggon was
discovered approaching us, in which were two men, one without a hat, his
hair streaming like a meteor, and both bawling _Stop, stop!_ like the
post-boy at the heels of John Gilpin. In a moment we recognised Freke.
With any thing but a volley of compliments, he assailed the driver for
carrying off his luggage, which sure enough was found in the boot, with
his splendid initials inscribed in a constellation of brass nails. His
hat had been blown off in the pursuit; but after adorning himself with a
turban, he was again admitted to our company, though not without some
reluctance expressed or understood. The fumes of his dinner had not
entirely subsided; and I am sorry to say, that his enthusiasm for his
king and country was about in inverse proportion to the honour he did
them by his extraordinary appearance. I wish it had exhausted itself in
song and sentiment; but it was evident that a strong desire to fight the
whole universe was fast superseding the exhilaration of reunion with his
friends. Unfortunately a poor Canadian, in passing with his _charette_,
struck the wheels of our coach; and though he alone was the sufferer,
being knocked into a ditch instantaneously, Freke was upon him in a
second, inflicting such a drubbing as reminded me forcibly of a similar
incident in Horace’s route to Brundusium. It was with difficulty that we
succeeded in reducing our hero to a sense of propriety, and compelling
him to console the astounded provincial with damages. The sufferer, who
thanked him in French for the not over generous remuneration, seemed
altogether at a loss to know for what he had been beaten; and I am happy
to say that the politeness of the peasant seemed to restore our military
friend to consciousness, and a fear that he had behaved like a brute. At
the next stage he provided himself with a Canadian cap, and on resuming
his seat overwhelmed us with apologies; so that we were compelled to
forgive the aberration, which was doubtless, as he said, attributable
solely to his loyal concern for the health of his Majesty, and to an
overflow of spirits at finding himself once more in the pale of the
British empire.
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Laprairie, that little
old Canadian town on the St Lawrence, where passengers take the steamer
to Montreal. Here was celebrating some kind of fête which had brought a
procession of nuns into the street, around whom were congregated groups
of smiling children in their holiday dresses. I entered a church, which
I found nearly deserted. A few of the poorer sort of persons were at
prayer, saying their _aves_ and _paters_ by the rosary—not, as is
sometimes supposed, through voluntary devotion, but in performance of
appointed penances, which they make haste to get through. Some funeral
ceremony seemed to be in preparation; for the church was dark, and a
_catafalque_ near the entrance gave me a startling sensation of awe. All
that Laprairie could show us was soon beheld; but our usual fortune had
attended us to the last, and we were again too late for the steamer. It
would not cross again till the morrow; yet there was the city of
Montreal distinctly visible before our eyes. From the quay we could
discern, down the river, the tin roof of the convent of Grayfriars,
glittering brightly in the descending sun. In fact, the whole city was
glittering, for every where its spires and roofs shone with a sheeting
of the Cornish material, which somehow or other, in this climate, seems
to resist oxidisation. In other respects, the scene was not remarkable,
except that there was the river—the broad, free, and magnificent St
Lawrence, with its rapids and its isles. Nuns’ Isle was above us, and
abreast of the city, with its fortress, was the green St Helen’s, _said
to be_ musical with the notes of birds, and fragrant with its flowers
and verdure.
We were regretting the premature departure of the steamer, when one of
our party came to announce that some Canadian boatmen were willing to
take us over in a batteau, if we would embark without delay. It was nine
miles, and the rapids were high; but we were informed that our ferrymen
were born to the oar, and might confidently be trusted with our lives.
We therefore lost no time in stowing ourselves, and part of our luggage,
into a mere shell of a boat, manned by half-a-dozen Canadians, who
pulled us into deep water with an air and a motion peculiarly their own.
Once fairly embarked, there was something not unpleasant in finding
ourselves upon the St Lawrence in a legitimate manner; for steamers were
yet a novelty in those waters, and were regarded by the watermen with
the same kind of contempt which an old English mail-coachman feels, in
the bottom of his soul, for stokers and railways. Finding ourselves, by
a lucky accident, thus agreeably launched, we naturally desired to hear
a genuine Canadian boat-song, and were not long in making the oarsmen
understand that an augmentation of their pay would be cheerfully
afforded, if they would but favour us with music. Every one has heard
the beautiful words of Tom Moore, inspired by a similar adventure. He
says of the familiar air to which they are set, that though critics may
think it trifling, it is for him rich with that charm which is given by
association to every little memorial of by-gone scenes and feelings. I
cannot say that the air of our _voyageurs_ was the same; yet I am quite
inclined to think that the words which he gives as the burden of the
Canadian boat-song which he heard so often, were those to which we were
treated. Barbarous, indeed, was their dialect if they attempted to give
us any thing so definite as the chanson,
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
but there was a perpetually recurring _refrain_ which sounded like
_do—daw—donny-day_, and which I suppose to be a sort of French
_fol-de-rol_, but which I can easily conceive to have been, as our
English Anacreon reports it—
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,
A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
Rude as was the verse and the music, however, I must own that, in its
place on that majestic river, as we were approaching the rapids whose
white caps were already leaping about our frail bark, with the
meditative light of sunset throwing a mellow radiance over all, there
was something that appealed very strongly to the imagination in that
simple Canadian air. I am not musical, and cannot recall it; yet even
now it will sometimes ring in my ears, when I go back in fancy to that
bright season of my life when I too was a _voyageur_; and I have often
been happy that accident thus gave me the pleasure of hearing what I
shall never hear again, and what travellers on the St Lawrence are every
year less and less likely to hear repeated. Indeed, I am almost able to
adopt every word which Moore has so poetically appended to his song. “I
remember,” says he, “when we entered at sunset upon one of those
beautiful lakes into which the St Lawrence so grandly and so
unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which
the finest conceptions of the finest masters have never given me; and
now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip
of our oars in the St Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids,
and all the new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive
during the whole of this very interesting voyage.”
But our trip was not all poetry and song. When we were fairly upon those
bright-looking rapids, we found our little nutshell quite too heavily
loaded, and were forced to feel our evident danger with somewhat of
alarm. The billows whirled and tossed us about, till our Canadians
themselves became frightened, and foolishly throwing up their oars,
began to cross themselves and to call on the Virgin and all the saints.
The tutelar of the St Lawrence is said to inhabit hard by, at St
Anne’s,—but such was our want of confidence in his power to interfere,
that we met this outbreak of Romish devotion with a protest so vehement
that it would have surprised the celebrated diet of Spires. Certain it
is that, on resuming their oars, the fellows did much more for us than
their aspirations had accomplished, when unaided by efforts. We soon
began to enjoy the dancing of our batteau, which gradually became less
violent, and was rather inspiring. Still, as no one but a coward would
sport in safety with dangers which were once sufficient to appal, let me
confess that I believe I should be thankful that my journey and my
mortal life were not ended together in those dangerous waters. I trust
it was not without some inward gratitude to Him who numbers the very
hairs of our head, that we found ourselves again in smooth tides, and
were soon landed in safety on the quay at Montreal.
THE CONQUEST OF NAPLES.[16]
The stirring period of the middle ages, rich in examples of bold emprise
and events of romantic interest, includes no more striking and
remarkable episode than the invasion and conquest, by the brother of St
Louis, of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. As an episode it has hitherto
been treated—introduced, and not unfrequently crushed into unmerited
insignificance, in works of general history. By both historian and poet
fragments have been brought into strong relief; as an independent whole,
no writer, until the present time, has ventured and chosen to attempt
its delineation. The virtues and misfortunes of the last legitimate
descendant of the imperial house of Stauffen, a house once so numerous
and powerful, have been wept over by the minstrels to whose fraternity
he belonged, vaunted by indignant chroniclers, and sung by the greatest
of Italy’s bards. The gallant and successful insurrection by which the
brightest gem was wrenched from the French usurper’s fire-new diadem,
and set in Arragon’s crown, has been repeatedly recorded and enlarged
upon, and not unfrequently mistold. But the integral treatment of the
conquest of Naples, in a work devoted to it alone, and worthy of the
weight and interest of the subject—the narrative of the ousting of the
German dynasty and establishment of a French one, including the
circumstances that led to the change, and apart from contemporary and
irrelevant history—were left for the elegant and capable pen of an
author honourably known for extensive learning and indefatigable
research. The puissant rule of Frederick the Hohenstauffe—the heroic
virtues and Homeric feats of Charles of Anjou—the precocious talents,
fatal errors, and untimely end of the luckless Conradin—have found a fit
chronicler in the accomplished Count of St Priest.
Besides acknowledged talents and great industry, this writer has brought
to his arduous task a familiar acquaintance—the result of long and
assiduous study—with the times and personages of whom he writes, a sound
judgment, and an honest desire of impartiality. In his quality of
Frenchman the latter was especially essential, to guard him against the
natural bias in favour of an illustrious and valiant countryman, that
might lead, almost unconsciously, to an undue exaltation of the virtues,
and extenuation of the crimes, of the hero of his narrative. Nor was
this the only instance in which he was liable to temptation. The
circumstances and causes of the massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers,
were handed down, in the first instance, by Italian writers, in the
adoption of whose views and assertions subsequent historians have
perhaps displayed too great servility. If we consider the vindictive and
treacherous instincts of the Sicilians, their fierce impatience of
foreign domination, and the slight account made of human life by the
natives of southern Europe generally, we cannot too hastily reject the
assertions and arguments by which M. de St Priest props his opinion,
that the vengeance was greater than the offence, the oppressed more
cruel than the oppressor. History affixes to an entire nation the stigma
of goading a conquered people to madness, by arrogance, injustice, and
excess. M. de St Priest takes up the defence, and, without claiming for
his client an honourable acquittal, strives, by the production of
extenuating circumstances, to induce the world to reconsider its severe
and sweeping verdict. He asks whether the evidence has been sufficiently
sifted, whether the facts have been properly understood and appreciated,
or even known. “I think,” he says, “they have not. The Sicilians
themselves acknowledge this. One of their most distinguished writers has
suspected falsehood, and sought the truth; but he has done so only in a
very exclusive, and consequently a very incomplete point of view. He has
aggravated the reproach that rests upon the memory of the French of the
thirteenth century. In my turn, I have resumed the debate with a
national feeling as strong, but less partial I hope, than that of most
of the Italian and German annalists, in whose footsteps our own
historians have trodden with undue complaisance. It is time to stand
aloof from these, and to reply to them.” It would be inverting the order
of our subject, here to dilate upon M. de St Priest’s views concerning
the massacre, to which we may hereafter recur. He scarcely makes out so
good a case for the French victims to Sicilian vengeance as he does for
the most prominent personage of his book, Charles of Anjou, whose
character he handles with masterly skill. He admits his crimes—sets off
with their acknowledgment; and yet so successfully does he palliate them
by the received ideas of the time, by the necessities and perplexities
of a most difficult position, that the reader forgets the faults in the
virtues of the hero, and receives an impression decidedly favourable to
the first French sovereign of Naples. “Had I proposed,”—we quote from
the preface—“to write a biography, and not a history, to paint a
portrait instead of a picture, I might have recoiled before my hero. The
blood of Conradin still cries out against his pitiless conqueror; but
the crime of the chief must not be imputed to the army. Aged warriors
were seen to weep and pray around the scaffold of a child. The end I
propose is not that of a retrospective vindication—an ungrateful, and
often a puerile task. Charles of Anjou was guilty. That fact admitted,
he still remains the greatest captain, the sole organising genius, and
one of the most illustrious princes of a period fertile in great kings.
Like his brother Louis IX., from whom, in other respects, he was only
too different, he valiantly served France. He carried the French name
into the most distant countries. By his political combinations, by the
alliances he secured for his family as much as by his victories, Charles
I., King of Sicily, seated his lineage upon the thrones of Greece,
Hungary, and Poland. Yet more—he saved the western world from another
Mahomedan invasion, less perceived, but not less imminent, than the
invasions of the eighth and seventeenth centuries. The bust of Charles
of Anjou merits a place between the statues of Charles Martel and John
Sobieski.”
This high eulogium, at the very commencement of the book, strikes us as
scarcely according with the promise of impartiality recorded upon the
following page. The meed of praise exceeds that we should be disposed to
allot to the conqueror of Naples. Still, upon investigation, it is
difficult to controvert his historian’s assertions, although some of
them admit of modification. Here M. de St Priest rather veils and
overlooks his hero’s faults than denies them to have existed. He says
nothing in this place of the misgovernment that lost Sicily, within a
few years of its reduction. Yet to such misrule, more even than to the
excesses of a licentious soldiery—partly consequent on it—was
attributable the temporary separation of that fair island from the
Neapolitan dominions. Subsequently he admits the imprudent contempt
shown by Charles to this portion of his new kingdom, his injudicious
choice of the agents and representatives of his authority, the exclusion
of the natives from public offices and employments—filled almost wholly
by Frenchmen—with many other arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust measures,
sometimes more vexatious in form than efficient for the end proposed;
as, for instance, the decree disarming the Sicilians, which must have
been wretchedly enforced, since the Palermitans, when the signal for
slaughter was given, were at no loss for weapons to exterminate their
tyrants. Whilst admitting the skill shown by Charles in his foreign
policy, and in the formation of great and advantageous alliances, we
must refuse him, upon his advocate’s own showing, the merit of able
internal administration. His military virtues are less questionable,
although the greatest of his victories, which placed his rival in his
power and secured his seat on the Neapolitan throne, was due less to any
generalship of his own than to the bold stratagem of a gray-headed
crusader.
Apart from its historical importance, M. de St Priest’s work is valuable
as exposing and illustrating the peculiar ideas, strange customs, and
barbarous prejudices of a remote and highly interesting period, less
known than it deserves, and whose annals and archives few have explored
more industriously than himself. In this point of view are we disposed,
whilst glancing at some of the principal events it records, especially
to consider it; and under this aspect it will probably be most prized
and esteemed by the majority. A greater familiarity than the general
mass of readers possess with the complicated history of the second
period of the middle ages is requisite for the due appreciation of the
book, and especially of its first volume. This is purely introductory to
the conquest. The name of the conqueror is mentioned for the first time
upon its last page. The matter it contains is not the less essential. It
sketches the establishment of the Norman dynasty in Sicily; the
elevation of that country into a monarchy by Duke Roger II.; the fall of
the family of Tancred, and the reign of Frederick II., (Emperor of
Germany, and grandson of Barbarossa,) who inherited the crown of the Two
Sicilies in right of his mother, the posthumous daughter of Roger, and
the last of the Norman line. This brings us into the thick of the
long-standing feud between the Pope and the Empire, which, after having
had the whole of Europe for its battle-field, at last concentrated
itself in a single country. “Towards the middle of the thirteenth
century it was transported to the southern extremity of Italy, to the
rich and beautiful lands now composing the kingdom of Naples. The
quarrel of the investitures terminated by the crusade of Sicily; a
debate about ecclesiastical jurisdiction ended in a dispute concerning
territorial possession. But although reduced to less vast proportions
and more simple terms, the antagonism of the pontificate and the throne
lost nothing of its depth, activity, and strength. Far from becoming
weakened, it assumed the more implacable and rancorous character of a
personal encounter. The war became a duel. It was natural that this
should happen. So soon as a regular power was founded in the south of
Italy, Rome could not permit the same power to establish itself in the
north of the peninsula. The interest of the temporal existence of the
popedom, the geographical position of the States of the Church, rendered
this policy stringent. The Popes could never allow Lombardy and the Two
Sicilies to be united under one sceptre. A King of Naples, as King of
the Lombards, pressed them on all sides; but as Emperor he crushed them.
This formidable hypothesis realised itself. A German dynasty menaced the
Holy See, and was broken. A French dynasty was called to replace it, and
obtained victory, power, and duration.” When this occurred—when the
Pope, beholding from the towers of Civita Vecchia his earthly sway
menaced with annihilation, and the Saracen hordes of Sicily’s powerful
King ravaging the Campagna, fulminated anathemas upon the impious
invaders, and summoned to his aid a prince of France—Manfredi, Prince of
Tarento, or Mainfroy, as M. de St Priest prefers to call him, the
natural son of Frederick II., was the virtual sovereign of the Two
Sicilies. Frederick, who died in his arms, left him regent of the
kingdom during the absence in Germany of his legitimate son Conrad—named
his heir in preference to his grandson Frederick, the orphan child of
his eldest son Henry, who had died a rebel, conquered and captive. This
was not all. “The imperial will declared the Prince of Tarento bailiff
or viceroy of the Two Sicilies, with unlimited powers and regal rights,
whenever Conrad should be resident in Germany or elsewhere. Things were
just then in the state thus provided for. Mainfroy became _ipso facto_
regent of the kingdom; and the lucky bastard saw himself not only
eventually called to the powerful inheritance of the house of Suabia,
but preferred to the natural and direct heir of so many crowns.”
The death of Frederick the Hohenstauffe, who for long after his decease
was popularly known—as in our day a greater than he still is—as _the_
Emperor, revived the hopes and courage of Pope Innocent IV., who
resolved to strike a decisive blow at the power of the house of Suabia.
Mainfroy was then its representative in Italy. He was only nineteen—a
feeble enemy, so thought Innocent, whom a word from the pontifical
throne would suffice to level with the dust. But where the sanguine Pope
expected to find a child, he met a man, in talent, energy, and prudence.
These qualities Mainfroy displayed in an eminent degree in the struggle
that ensued; and when Conrad landed in his kingdom, which had been
represented to him as turbulent and agitated, he was astonished at the
tranquillity it enjoyed. He embraced his brother, and insisted on his
walking by his side, under the same dais, from the sea to the city. This
good understanding did not last long. Conrad was jealous of the man who
had so ably supplied his place, and jealousy at last became hatred. He
deprived Mainfroy of the possessions secured to him by his father’s
will, banished his maternal relatives with ignominy, and did all he
could, but in vain, to drive him to revolt. Under these circumstances,
it is not surprising that when Conrad died, at the age of twenty-six,
leaving Berthold, Margrave of Hohemburg, regent of the kingdom during
the minority of his son Conrad V., or Conradin—who had been born since
his departure from Germany, and whom he had never seen—there were not
wanting persons to accuse Mainfroy as an accessary to his death.
Mainfroy had already been charged—falsely, there can be little doubt—of
having smothered, under mattresses, his father and benefactor, the
Emperor Frederick. There was more probability, if not more truth, in the
accusation of fratricide; for, if Conrad had lived, doubtless Mainfroy
would, sooner or later, have been sacrificed to his jealousy or safety.
“The majority of chroniclers assign to Mainfroy, as an accomplice, a
physician of Salerno; and add, with the credulity of the times, that he
killed the King of the Romans by introducing diamond dust, an infallible
poison, into his entrails. Others, bolder or better informed, give the
name of the poisoner, and call him John of Procida.” Whether this death
resulted from poison or disease, it was hailed as a happy event by the
Italians, and with a great burst of laughter by the Pope, who at once
renounced his project of calling a foreign prince to the throne of
Sicily, and resumed, with fresh ardour, his plans of conquest and
annexation. Advancing to the Neapolitan frontier, he was there met by
the Prince of Tarento and the Margrave of Hohemburg, who came to place
themselves at his disposal, and to supplicate him on behalf of the
infant Conradin. The Pope, who saw a proof of weakness in this humility,
insisted that the Two Sicilies should be delivered up to the Church;
saying that he would then investigate the rights of Conradin, and admit
them if valid. The Margrave, alarmed at the aspect of things, made over
the regency to Mainfroy, who accepted it with affected repugnance. A
powerful party called this prince to the throne: it was the aristocratic
and national party, averse alike to papal domination and to the
government of a child. They entered into an agreement with Mainfroy, by
which they swore to obey him as regent, so long as the little King
should live; stipulating that if he died a minor, or without direct
heirs, the Prince of Tarento should succeed him as sovereign. The
Margrave of Hohemburg, faithless to the trust reposed in him by Conrad,
agreed to these conditions, and promised to deliver up to Mainfroy the
late King’s treasures. Instead of so doing, the double traitor made his
escape with them, leaving the new regent in such poverty that, in order
to pay his German mercenaries, he was compelled to sell the hereditary
jewels and gold and silver vases of his mother’s family.
If Mainfroy had made good fight in defence of Conrad’s rights, we may be
sure he did not less strenuously strive when his own claim was to be
vindicated. Unfortunate at first, and about to succumb to papal power
and intrigues, he, as a last resource, threw himself into the arms of
the Saracens of Lucera. These unbelievers had been greatly encouraged by
his father, who was passionately addicted to things oriental. “From his
infancy,” M. de St Priest says of Frederick, “he lived surrounded with
astrologers, eunuchs, and odaliques. His palace was a seraglio, himself
a sultan. This was quite natural. In Sicily all visible objects were
Asiatic. The external form of the houses, their internal architecture,
the streets, the baths, the gardens, even the churches, bore the stamp
of Islamism. The praises of God are still to be seen engraved in Arabic
on marble columns; and in the same language were they traced, in gold
and diamonds and pearls, upon the mantle and dalmatica of Sicily’s
Queens and Kings. Palermo was then called the trilingual city. Latin and
Arabic were equally spoken there; and the Italian, the _favella
volgare_, originated at the court of Frederick-Roger, under the Moorish
arcades of his palaces at Palermo and Catania. The language of Petrarch
was murmured, for the first time, beside the fountains of the Ziza. The
outward forms of Islamism were then, in southern Europe, the ensign
hoisted by that small number of liberal thinkers, the avowed enemies of
ecclesiastical and monkish domination, who willingly assumed the name of
Epicureans.” Further on we have the following, explanatory of the
peaceable settlement of the infidel in Sicily, and curiously
illustrating the contradictions and bigotry of the time. “With an
audacity previously unheard-of, Frederick II., after fighting and
conquering the Saracens who overran and disturbed Sicily, transported
entire colonies of them to Lucera, in the Capitanata, in the immediate
vicinity of the patrimony of St Peter, thus planting, in the heart of
his kingdom, the Mahomedan standard he was about to combat in Syria.
Decrepid though he was, Pope Honorius felt the danger and insult of such
proximity. What were the arms of the holy see against an opponent that
none of its anathemas could touch? The Pontiff became indignant, vented
threats; but was soon appeased. When the wily Frederick saw him angry,
he promised a crusade; whereupon the Pope calmed himself, and treated
the Emperor as a son.” Subsequent Popes were less easy to pacify, and
ban and excommunication were heaped upon the Emperor’s head. Gregory
IX., in his bulls, called him “_a marine monster, whose jaws are full of
blasphemies_;” to which complimentary phrase Frederick replied by the
epithets of “_great dragon, antichrist_,” and “_new Balaam_.” A third
extract will complete the sketch of the Saracens, and their position in
Sicily. “Surrounded by odaliques and dancing women; giving eunuchs for
guards to his wife, the beautiful Isabella Plantagenet, a daughter of
the English King; often clothed in oriental robes; in war-time mounted
on an elephant; in his palace surrounded by tame lions; always
accompanied by a troop of Mussulmans, to whom he showed great
indulgence, permitting them the violation of churches and women, debauch
and sacrilege,—Frederick II., in the opinion of his subjects, was no
longer a Christian prince. During the last ten years of his reign this
state of things reached its height. The number of barbarian troops daily
increased. Seventeen new companies, summoned from Africa, were
dispersed, like an invading army, over the Basilicata and Calabria.
Finally, the Emperor went so far as to instal them in the places of
masters of ports, and in other offices that gave these Mussulmans
jurisdiction over Christian populations.” And when a Saracen captain,
named Phocax, in garrison at Trani, ill-treated a citizen of noble
birth, Messer Simone Rocca, and grossly outraged his wife, the aggrieved
man could obtain no satisfaction. “The Emperor only laughed. ‘_Messer
Simone_,’ he said, to the complainant, ‘_dov’è forza non è vergogna_.
Go, Phocax will not do it again; had he been a native of the country, I
would have had his head cut off.’” On the death of this indulgent
patron, the Saracen colony in the kingdom of Naples saw its existence
menaced. The infidels were lost if Rome became mistress of the country.
The triumph of the Pope would be the tocsin of their extermination. They
resolved to defend themselves to the last. They held Lucera, Accerenza,
and Girafalco, three impregnable fortresses; they also commanded at
other points, less strong but still important. They felt themselves
numerous, courageous, and determined. Mainfroy could not doubt that they
would gladly rally round the banner of their benefactor’s son; and in
this hope he set out for Lucera, where John the Moor then commanded.
This man, a slave whom the Emperor’s caprice had raised to the highest
dignities, promised Mainfroy the best of receptions. But when the Prince
of Tarento reached Lucera, the traitor had gone over to the Pope, taking
with him a thousand Saracens and three hundred Germans, and leaving the
town in the keeping of a man of his tribe, Makrizi by name. On learning
this treachery, Mainfroy still did not renounce his project of confiding
himself to the Arabs—so cherished by his father, so favoured by himself.
Only, instead of approaching the fortress with his little army, as
regent of the kingdom, he preferred to go as a knight-errant, attended
only by three esquires, like a paladin of the Round Table. This portion
of Mainfroy’s life, as well as many other passages in M. de St Priest’s
book, reads like an extract from some old romance of chivalry. After
wandering about, in the gloom and rain of a November night, and losing
his way repeatedly, Adenulfo, one of Mainfroy’s three men-at-arms, and
formerly forester to Frederick II., perceived a white object in the
darkness, and recognised a hunting-lodge built by the Emperor. He
conducted the prince thither, and they lighted a large fire,—a most
imprudent act, for the flame was easily perceptible at Foggia, where
Otho of Hohemburg was then in garrison with a portion of the papal army.
But Mainfroy was young and a poet. At sight of the splendid trees
blazing on the hearth, he forgot the present, and thought only of the
past; perhaps he recalled the time, not yet very distant, when as a
child, on winter nights like that one, and perchance in that very place,
he had seen his father, on his return from an imperial hunt, seat
himself at that same hearth, and talk familiarly with his attendants of
his wars and his amours, singing the praises of the lovely
Catalanas,[17] and venting curses on the Pope. The illusion was of short
duration. At early dawn Mainfroy and his little escort took horse, and
after an hour’s march they beheld, through the misty morning air, the
tall hill of Lucera, and on its summit the Saracen citadel and its
massive walls, crowned with two-and-twenty towers. But the guardians of
the gate refused to open without orders from Makrizi, who moreover, it
would appear, had the key in his keeping. Sure that he would deny
admittance, they urged the prince to enter as he best might, for that,
once within the walls, all would go well. Beneath the gate was a sort of
trench, or gutter, to carry off the rain, and through this it was not
difficult for a young man of twenty, slender and active like Mainfroy,
to squeeze himself. He attempted to do so, but the Saracens could not
support the sight of their Emperor’s son grovelling on the ground like a
reptile. “Let us not,” they exclaimed, “allow our lord to enter our
walls in this vile posture. Let his entrance be worthy of a prince! Let
us break the gates!” In an instant these were overthrown; Mainfroy
passed over their ruins, and was carried upon the shoulders of the
Saracens to the public market-place, surrounded by a joyous multitude.
He met Makrizi, who, furious at the news of his entrance, was summoning
the garrison to arms. “Makrizi! Makrizi!” cried the Saracens and the
people, “get off your horse, and kiss the prince’s feet!” The Arab
obeyed, and prostrated himself. Mainfroy had valiantly played his last
stake, and fortune favoured his audacity. In Lucera he found the
treasures of Frederick II., of King Conrad, of the Margrave Berthold,
and of John the Moor. Then, as ever, money was the sinew of war. Its
possession changed the aspect of affairs. In less than a month, the
proscribed and fugitive Mainfroy had dispersed the Pope’s army, taken
and executed John the Moor, and marched upon Naples to seize a crown.
And now, for many years, his career of success was unchequered by a
reverse. His arms were uniformly triumphant in the field; he was the
most magnificent prince, and passed as the richest sovereign, in Europe.
At last the marriage of his daughter Constance with the Infante Don
Pedro, son of King James of Arragon, crowned his prosperity. Concluded
in defiance of the court of Rome, this marriage allied the bastard
Prince of Tarento with the French royal family; for Isabella of Arragon,
sister of his son-in-law Don Pedro, became the wife of Philip, son of
Louis IX., and heir apparent to the crown of France. This last piece of
good fortune nearly turned Mainfroy’s head. Instead of defending himself
against the Holy See, he assumed the offensive, and invaded its
territories. Moreover, he now openly professed, and established as a
principle, that the right to dispose of the imperial diadem was not
vested in the Popes, but in the senate and people of Rome. “It is time,”
he added, “to put an end to this usurpation.” Such maxims, thus publicly
proclaimed, rendered the Pope irreconcilable. The papal dream of
annexing the Two Sicilies to the pontificate had long melted into air
before the sun of Mainfroy’s arrogant prosperity; and Urban IV.,
convinced that the Church had need of a valiant and devoted defender,
turned his eyes northwards, whilst his lips pronounced the name of
Charles of Anjou.
Charles, the _good_ Count of Anjou, as some of the chroniclers call him,
was married to Beatrix of Savoy, Countess of Provence, whose hand he
obtained in preference to two formidable rivals,—Conrad, son of the
Hohenstauffe, and Pedro of Arragon. The latter we have just referred to
as having subsequently married a daughter of Mainfroy. Through life
Peter and Charles were destined to be rivals; and if the latter had the
advantage at the outset, his competitor afterwards in some degree
balanced the account by robbing him of the island of Sicily. In 1248,
soon after his marriage, Charles embarked at Aiguesmortes with his
brother Louis and their wives, on a crusade,—was sick to death at the
island of Cyprus, but recovered, and performed prodigies of valour in
fight with the Saracen. It seemed as if the scent of battle sufficed to
restore him his full vigour; and he displayed a furious impetuosity and
reckless daring that almost surpass belief. On arriving off Damietta,
and at sight of the Saracen army waiting on the shore, he and St Louis
sprang from their galley, and waded to land, with the water to their
waists. Surrounded by the enemy, Charles raised a wall of corpses around
him, until his knights came up to the rescue. Heading them, he charged
the infidel host, ordering to strike at the horses’ breasts. The noble
Arab chargers fell by hundreds; the Saracens fled; Louis and Charles
pursued; Damietta was the prize of the Christians. “The adventurous
prince feared the elements as little as he did man. One day the Saracens
threw Greek fire upon the crusaders’ tents. Struck with surprise at
sight of this mysterious enemy, the Christians were so terrified that
they dared not attempt to extinguish the flames. ‘I will go,’ cried the
Count of Anjou. They tried to retain him by force, but he broke from
them like a madman, and succeeded in his design. At another time, St
Louis, from the top of a hill, saw him engaged single-handed with a
whole troop of Saracens, who hurled at him darts with flaming flags,
which stuck into and burnt his horse’s crupper. Thus did Charles display
the first symptoms of a will incapable of receding even before
impossibilities,—a dangerous application of a great virtue; but then,
these feats of the Count of Anjou delighted every body. Other exploits
followed. Like a Christian Horatius, Charles one day stopped the whole
Mussulman army upon a wooden bridge.” This great bravery was accompanied
by pride, egotism, and hardness of heart, and these qualities caused
bickerings between him and St Louis. Nevertheless, the brothers were
fondly attached to each other; and when Charles returned to Provence he
displayed a depth of emotion on parting from his king that surprised the
army, which did not give him credit for so much fraternal affection.
There was great contrast of character between him and his royal brother.
“They had in common,” says M. de St Priest, “military courage, chastity,
probity, and respect to their plighted word.... St Louis was a
Frenchman, Charles of Anjou a Spaniard. St Louis had that communicative
disposition, that taste for social enjoyment, that necessity of
expansion and gentle gaiety, generally attributed to our nation. He was
evidently the man born beside the waters of Loire or Seine. Charles, on
the other hand, seemed to have received life upon the rugged rocks of
Toledo, or in the naked and melancholy plains of Valladolid. He was
proud and gloomy; no smile ever curved his lips. Uncommunicative, he
confided his designs to no one. Although hasty, violent, and passionate,
he strove to conceal his emotions. He slept little, spoke less; never
forgot a service or an injury. His indulgence for his partisans and
servants was unbounded: if he was passionately fond of gold, it was
especially that he might shower it upon them. Charles and Louis were a
contrast even in form and colour of face. Louis was fair and ruddy;
Charles had black hair, an olive skin, nervous limbs, and a prominent
nose. Goodness was the characteristic of the king, severity of the
count. Both of imposing aspect,—one as a father, the other as a
master—Louis inspired respect and love, Charles respect and terror. By
the admission of all his contemporaries, nothing could be more majestic
than the look, gait, and stature of the Count of Anjou. In an assemblage
of princes he eclipsed them all. A poet who knew him well, and who calls
him the most _seignorial_ of men, shows him to us at the court of France
in the midst of his brothers, and characterises him by this energetic
line—
‘Tous furent filz de roy, mais Charles le fut mieux.’”
Such was the man who, on the 15th May 1265, embarked at Marseilles for
Rome, with a thousand chosen knights upon thirty galleys, leaving the
main body of his army at Lyons to cross the Alps with the Countess
Beatrix, under the nominal command of the young Robert de Bethune
Dampierre, heir to the county of Flanders, and the real guidance of
Gilles de Traisignies, constable of France. At the moment of his
departure, timid counsellors magnified the peril of the enterprise, and
the superiority of the hostile fleet that watched to intercept him; but
nothing could shake the determination of the Count of Anjou. “Good
conduct,” he said, as he put foot on his galley’s deck, “overcomes ill
fortune. I promised the Pope to be at Rome before Pentecost, and I will
keep my word.” If fortune had not favoured him, however, it is doubtful
if he would have succeeded in running the gauntlet through the sixty
Sicilian galleys, manned with the practised mariners of Pisa, Naples,
and Amalfi, that waited to pounce, like hawk on sparrow, upon his feeble
armament. Independently of this formidable squadron, the entrance of the
port of Ostia was encumbered, by Mainfroy’s order, with beams and huge
stones, against which the French ships were expected inevitably to
shatter themselves. Altogether, the marine preparations were so
formidable, they were proclaimed with such ostentation, and Mainfroy
appeared so convinced of their efficacy, that at Rome the partisans of
Charles and the Pope lost courage. The decisive moment arrived, and no
fleet appeared; when suddenly a rumour spread that Charles was
shipwrecked and drowned. The Ghibellines, or imperialists, hailed the
report with delight, the Guelfs with terror. Friends and enemies alike
believed the fatal intelligence, when at break of day, on the eve of
Pentecost, a boat, containing ten men, entered the Tiber. Amongst these
ten men was Charles of Anjou. He owed his safety to his peril;
deliverance had grown out of impending destruction. A violent storm had
had a double result: Mainfroy’s fleet, which for some days past had
blockaded the Tiber, was compelled to put to sea, and the thirty
Provençal galleys were dispersed in view of Pisa. Charles was wrecked on
the coast of Tuscany; to escape capture by one of Mainfroy’s
lieutenants, he threw himself into a skiff, and the wind guided him into
the Tiber, which he entered unperceived by the Sicilian admiral. Such
was the fortunate chance that served him. Men believed him at the bottom
of the sea, and at that moment he landed in Italy.
Mainfroy prepared for defence, affecting boundless confidence in the
result of the approaching strife, but in reality uneasy at the approach
of his formidable foe. His hatred found vent in sarcasm and abusive
words. “Although the name of the terrible Charles of Anjou did not
encourage childish diminutives, Mainfroy and his flatterers never spoke
of him otherwise than as Carlotto” (Charley.) This was not very
dignified or in good taste. But Charles was at no loss for a retort.
When his wife had joined him, at the head of thirty thousand men, and
the royal pair had been crowned in the Church of the Lateran, in sight
and amidst the acclamations of an immense multitude, King and Queen of
Sicily, he marched upon Naples. At the frontier, Mainfroy, after a vain
attempt to intimidate the Pope, endeavoured to delay his progress by
negotiation. “Tell the Sultan of Lucera,” replied Charles to the Swabian
envoys, “that between us there can be neither peace nor truce; that soon
he shall transport me to paradise or I will send him to hell.” And
having thus branded his opponent as an infidel, and his opponent’s cause
as unjust, he resolutely entered the Neapolitan states. The first
barrier to his progress, the fortified bridge of Ceprano, was opened to
him by Riccardo d’Aquino, Count of Caserte, out of revenge for the
alleged seduction or violation of his wife by Mainfroy. The count was
about to defend the post, when news of his dishonour reached him. He
vowed a terrible revenge; but, scrupulous even in his anger, he sent to
consult the casuists of the French camp, whether a vassal had the right
to punish the liege lord who had outraged him in his honour. The
casuists made an affirmative reply, and Caserte gave free passage to
Charles of Anjou. History is more positive of the count’s treason than
of the outrage said to have induced it. The occupation of the bridge was
but a small step towards the conquest of the Two Sicilies. Charles’s
path was beset with obstacles, augmented by the difficulty of
transporting his warlike engines, and by fierce dissensions in his army.
These alone were sufficient to ruin the enterprise; but the valour and
military science of the French prince supplied all deficiencies. His
operations were sometimes, however, a little impeded from pious
scruples; as, for instance, when he put off the assault of a town for
two days, in order not to fight on Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless his
progress was rapid and triumphant, and soon the silver fleur-de-lis of
France, and the crimson ones of the Guelfs, floated above the walls or
over the ruins of Mainfroy’s strongest forts. All the Saracens who fell
into Charles’s hands were immediately put to the sword. At last, in the
valley of Santa Maria de Grandella, and at four miles from the town of
Benevento, the French army—to which were now united the levies of many
disaffected Neapolitan nobles—came in sight of Mainfroy’s host, drawn up
in order of battle. The strength of the two armies is variously stated,
but it appears certain that the numerical advantage was considerably on
the side of Charles. Before engaging, each leader made a speech to his
troops. That of Charles reminds us of Cromwell’s well-known exhortation
to his men, to trust in God and keep their powder dry. “Have confidence
in God,” said the valiant and pious Frenchman, “but neglect not human
means; and be attentive, when battle begins, to what I now tell you:
strike at the horses rather than at the men, not with edge, but with
point; so that, falling with his horse and being unable to rise quickly,
on account of the weight of his armour, the cavalier may immediately
have his throat cut by the _ribauds_. Let each of you be always
accompanied by one of those varlets, and even by two. Forget not that,
and march!” The manœuvre prescribed by Charles of Anjou, and which he
had already essayed in Palestine, was forbidden by chivalrous etiquette,
which stigmatised as disloyal the act of striking at the horses’ heads.
But Charles was not at a tournament. His aim was victory, and his
injunction was well received by his knights, whom his words excited,
says a chronicler, _as the huntsman excites the dogs_. There was neither
blame nor murmur. Nevertheless his chevaliers were the flower of
nobility; but they did not hold themselves engaged in a regular war;
they looked upon the expedition as a crusade against infidels. The
bishop of Auxerre gave a final benediction; the trumpets sounded, and
the signal of battle echoed through both camps.
Neither army had left its ground when the clamour of many thousand
voices was heard; and, like a whirlwind, the Saracen archers from Lucera
poured upon the field. Crossing the little river Calora, they fell upon
the French infantry with a discharge of arrows. The French, with loud
cries of “Down with the Saracens! Down with the swine!” rushed furiously
to meet them. The medley was terrible, and at first victory favoured the
turban. Charles’s troops broke and fled, when Ruggiero San Severino
rallied them, waving, by way of banner, a bloody shirt, stripped from a
soldier’s corpse. Philip de Montfort brought up the reserve, and threw
himself upon the Saracens, whom he cut to pieces with cries of
“Montfort, chevaliers!” “Swabia, chevaliers!” replied Gualvano Lancia,
who, without waiting orders from Mainfroy, hurried forward a thousand
men of the best German troops. He fell upon the French, who were weary
with striking, and made a great slaughter of them. Charles of Anjou, who
in his part of the field performed, as usual, prodigies of valour, now
left the wing he commanded and attacked Gualvano Lancia. The Germans and
Saracens were cut to pieces and dispersed; but the Italian battalions,
commanded by nobles of the country, had not yet shared the combat.
Mainfroy had kept them as a reserve, and now called upon them to follow
him. Instead of so doing, they turned their backs and fled. At the same
moment a silver eagle, surmounting Mainfroy’s helm, fell and broke in
pieces. At this evil omen, the son of the Hohenstauffe felt himself
lost. He turned towards the faithful few who still stood by him, and
said in the words of the Catholic Church: _Hoc est signum Dei_. Then,
followed by Tibaldo Annibaldi, he plunged into the thickest of the
hostile squadrons, and was seen no more alive. For three days nothing
was heard of him, and Charles of Anjou thought he had escaped, when a
soldier led his war-horse past the window of Gualvano Lancia and two
other Ghibelline prisoners. On recognising the steed, the captives burst
into tears, and implored the soldier, a Picard, to tell them the fate of
its rider, whether prisoner, slain, or fugitive. “The Picard, having
learned who the prisoners were, replied thus: ‘I will tell you the
truth; during the fight, the man who mounted this horse came up,
uttering terrible cries. He rushed into the mêlée, followed by another
cavalier much less than himself, and fell upon us with such courage
that, had he been supported by others as brave, he would have beaten us
or given us much to do. I showed front to this knight and wounded his
charger in the head with a lance-thrust; the horse, feeling itself
wounded, threw its rider; then the _ribauds_ despoiled him of his arms
and made an end of him. As his scarf was very beautiful, I took it, as
well as his horse; and here they both are.’ Such was the noble end of
Manfred, or Machtfried, of Stauffen, whom the French were wont to call
Mainfroy of Sicily.” With great difficulty, the royal corpse was found,
amidst heaps of slain, and the French chevaliers entreated Charles to
allow it honourable burial. “Willingly,” replied Charles, “were he not
excommunicated.” The new King of Sicily could not reasonably be expected
to grant ecclesiastical interment to the man, whom he had fought and
supplanted on the sole ground of his being out of the pale of the
church. So a trench was dug at the foot of the bridge over the Calora,
the body was laid in it, the army filed by, and each soldier, as he
passed, threw a stone upon the unconsecrated grave. As great warriors
have had worse monuments. But papal hatred followed Mainfroy even beyond
the tomb. Under pretence that the remains of the excommunicated hero
infected the pontifical soil, Clement IV.’s nuncio had them unearthed
and dragged at night, without torches, to the banks of the Garigliano.
There they were abandoned to the pelting storm and prowling beast of
prey. “Whilst a savage fanaticism thus insulted the ashes of Sicily’s
King, poetry prepared him a glorious revenge. Eight months before the
battle of Benevento, a child was born at Florence, in May 1265, whose
name was Dante Alighieri. Dante protected the memory of Mainfroy.”
For eight days the unfortunate town of Benevento was abandoned to the
horrors of the sack. At the end of that time Charles called his greedy
soldiers from pillage and excess, rallied them round his standard and
marched to Naples. The magnificence of his entrance dazzled and
delighted the people, surpassing even the vaunted splendour of the proud
Hohenstauffen. In every respect Charles’s victory was complete. The
Anjevine banner floated throughout the kingdom of Naples; and after very
slight resistance on the part of Gualvano Lancia and of Conrad of
Antioch, an illegitimate grandson of the Emperor Frederick, Sicily and
Calabria were also reduced and tranquillised. But the triumphant king
was still surrounded with difficulties. His pecuniary obligations were
numerous and heavy, and his new kingdom offered no resources for their
acquittal. The population was greatly reduced, agriculture had
disappeared, commerce was at the very lowest ebb, the nobility were
ruined, and revenue there was none. On the other hand, Charles’s troops
were clamorous for arrears; and the Pope, who had pledged the treasures
of the Roman churches to Tuscan bankers for funds to carry on the war,
was urgent in his demands of repayment, and went so far as to threaten
his debtor with excommunication. Charles the First was in great
perplexity. The clergy, who alone had some means, he was forbidden to
tax, by the terms of his treaty with the Pope. In this dilemma, the King
was compelled to resort to imposts and extortions, which rendered him
odious to his subjects. In this respect he was no worse, perhaps, than
his immediate predecessors, who seldom scrupled to raise a forced
contribution, even by the armed hand; but his manner of procuring his
supplies was particularly obnoxious to the Neapolitans. He reduced it to
a regular system, based upon the French fiscal forms. The people
preferred the occasional swoop of a party of Saracens to the
tax-gatherer’s systematic spoliation. The irritation became general.
Murmurs and complaints were heard on all sides, mingled with regrets for
Mainfroy. The Pope, unwilling to share Charles’s unpopularity,
dissatisfied at the nonpayment of his advances, and but slightly
appeased by the present of a golden throne and candelabra sent him from
the sack of Benevento, wrote harsh letters to his ally, and sent him
long lectures and instructions as to how he should govern, bidding him,
above all things, to be _amiable_. This was not much in Charles’s way;
neither did his political views at all agree with those of his Holiness
Clement IV. He was certainly by no means amiable, and, moreover, he
committed a grievous blunder, common enough with his countrymen, and
which alienated the affections of his subjects. He tried to Frenchify
his new dominions. Obstinately bent on moving the mountain, he would not
even meet it half-way. He scorned to take a lesson from the Norman
founders of the kingdom, who “governed Sicily not as conquerors but as
old hereditary sovereigns,” and were cautious of the too sudden
introduction of foreign innovations. His object, according to M. de St
Priest’s own showing, was at least as much the increase of the power and
importance of France, as the happiness of the people he had come to
reign over. His historian admires him for this, and for his wish “to
make half Europe, not a vassal, but a dependency of France.” He
introduced the forms of French administration, abolished the offices and
etiquette that had existed since the days of King Roger, and replaced
them by those of the court of Vincennes, changes which excited great
hatred and dislike to their author. He abandoned the Castel Capuano, the
residence of Frederick II., and built the Castel Nuovo, on the model of
the Paris Bastile. The copy has survived the original. But we must pass
over, for the present, the merits and errors of Charles, and his
ambitious designs upon Italy and the East, to bring upon the scene the
last heir of the house of Stauffen.
Conrad, known in history by the diminutive of Conradin,[18] was born at
Landshut, in Bavaria, on the 25th of March 1252, and was hailed in his
cradle by the high-sounding titles of king of Jerusalem and Sicily, king
of the Romans, future emperor, &c. Not one of these imaginary crowns did
he ever enjoy; even his paternal heritage was wrested from him whilst
yet an infant; the grandson of Frederick II. knew want and poverty, and
was more than once indebted to faithful friends and adherents for a roof
to cover his head. The events of his life were as remarkable as the
years composing it were few. “Born in 1252, he died in 1268. The
interval embraces but sixteen years, and yet that short period is
animated by all the passions, emotions, and tumult of a virile mind. We
find in it, in a high degree, ambition, courage, friendship, and, in a
more doubtful perspective—love. In reality, Conradin had no childhood.
His life had nothing to do with the laws regulating human growth. From
the cradle his existence was one of agitation.”
An anecdote, whose truth modern writers have contested, but to which M.
de St Priest gives credit, confirms, in conjunction with many other
circumstances, the child’s extraordinary precocity of intelligence and
feeling. Considering his mother as widow of an emperor, although his
father had never legally borne the imperial title, since he had not been
crowned at Rome, Conradin treated her with the utmost ceremony and
observance of etiquette. Suddenly, weary of living in dependence at the
court of her brother, Louis the Severe, Duke of Bavaria, Queen
Elizabeth-Margaret married Meinhard de Gorice, brother of the Count de
Tirol, and from queen became a mere countess.[19] This alliance, unequal
but not low, greatly shocked Conradin: in the words of a chronicler, he
was moved by it beyond power of expression, and from that moment he
abstained from paying his mother the usual honours. She asked him the
reason. “Mother,” replied Conradin, “I rendered you the homage due to an
emperor’s widow; now you are married to one less than him, and I, a king
and an emperor’s son, can no longer render you the honours due to an
empress.” He who spoke this was but seven years old, and hence many
writers have treated the words as fiction. But it must be borne in mind
that from his very cradle he had been nourished with the hopes of his
party, whose pretensions and dreams of triumph had been unceasingly
instilled into him. The talk of all around him had been of sceptres to
reconquer, victories to win, rebels to chastise; and the pathetic but
deceitful picture of an oppressed people, sighing for his return, had
been kept continually before his eyes. Every act of his life was
premature. Brought up in a political hot-bed, he showed early symptoms
of imperfect mental growth, and was crushed and annihilated by the first
storm. Whilst yet a very young child, he was surrounded by the empty
forms of sovereignty, and made to think himself both a man and a king.
His uncle and stepfather dragged him from town to town, dressed in regal
robes, and compelled him to hold provincial diets. Whilst thus parading,
they unscrupulously despoiled him. Before he was ten years old, the Duke
of Bavaria made him sign a will bequeathing to him the whole of his
possessions, in case of his death without heirs. Even this did not
satisfy the greedy Bavarian, who soon afterwards extracted from him, by
manner of donation, some of his richest domains in Rhineland and the
Palatinate. The example found imitators. Princes, bishops, cities, and
abbeys fell tooth and nail upon the heritage of the unfortunate child.
The bishops of Augsburg and Constance, the counts of Wurtemburg, the
burgraves of Nuremberg, the king of Bohemia, and several others, shared
the spoils. The houses of Austria and Prussia date their rise from that
time—the nucleus of the two monarchies was formed by fragments of
Conradin’s dominions; and the whole of Germany as it now appears, in its
kingdoms and divisions, may be traced back to the fragments of this
total wreck and infamous spoliation. Thus plundered, nothing remained
but to start the victim on his travels; a royal Quixote in search of a
crown. At first he showed small disposition to such an adventure, and
more than one deputation of Ghibellines, and even of Guelfs, departed
unsuccessful from before the young king’s footstool; until at last
Gualvano Lancia, Mainfroy’s relative and faithful adherent, and Corrado
and Marino Capece, presented themselves at the gate of the ancient
castle of Hohenschwangau. Lancia had been amnestied after the battle of
Benevento, at the request of the Pope, but much against the will of
Charles of Anjou. He took the oaths to the new king, but soon afterwards
left the kingdom, and now appeared before Conradin as deputy from the
whole body of Ghibellines, which had reconstituted itself throughout the
entire kingdom of the Sicilies, and sent to the grandson of the Emperor
Frederick assurances of its devotion, the promise of an army, and
considerable sums of money. Lancia was the bearer of one hundred
thousand gold florins. Thus was it, says the chronicler, Saba Malaspina,
that the little sleeping dog was roused up: “_ad suscitandum catulum
dormientem_.” In spite of the tears and entreaties of his mother, who
had a foreboding of his fate, and urged him to remain with her, Conradin
published a lengthy manifesto, asserting his rights to the crown of
Sicily, put himself at the head of ten thousand men, hired by Ghibelline
gold, and entered Italy, full of confidence, hope, and enthusiasm,
accompanied by his bosom friend, Frederick, Duke of Austria, son of the
Margrave of Baden, and followed by the Duke of Bavaria, and by other
nobles, who promised him support, but shamefully abandoned him at
Verona, upon the most absurd and frivolous pretexts. The poor boy was
born to be every body’s dupe. He believed implicitly the hypocritical
professions of his treacherous kinsman, made over to him one of the last
shreds of his German possessions, and parted from him with tears in his
eyes, remaining alone at Verona, with Frederick of Austria, who was only
three years his senior, for sole ally—his troops reduced by the
defection of his uncle and the others to about three thousand men.
Instead of marching at once to Pisa, and taking ship for Sicily, whose
inhabitants were ripe for insurrection, he sent Corrado Capece thither,
and himself lingered two months in total inaction. Pisa was devoted to
the house of Swabia; Capece had no difficulty in obtaining a galley
(Conradin would have found a fleet as easily), and after calling at
Tunis for the Spanish Infante Don Fadrique, with four hundred Spaniards
and Saracens, he landed at Sciacca, gained an advantage over the French,
and saw the greater part of Sicily declare for Conradin. After a while,
Conradin, having raised money from the Ghibelline towns, and recruited
his forces, moved forward to Pavia; whilst Charles of Anjou, advancing
northward to meet his rival, entered Pisa sword in hand, upset its
towers and ruined its port. It would lead us too far, and be of no great
interest, to trace the singular complications of Italian affairs at this
moment, and the perplexities of the Pope, who was at least as jealous of
the abode of Charles in Tuscany, as of the feeble attempt of the old
German dynasty to regain its seat upon the Neapolitan throne. We must
confine ourselves to the career of Conradin, and follow his fortunes,
now drawing to a lamentable close. There was a bright flash, however,
before the final setting of his star. He occupied Pisa—still the first
port in Italy—in spite of the devastations of Charles of Anjou; on all
sides the Ghibelline party raised its head, and his enterprise assumed a
serious aspect. Clement IV. became alarmed, and sent, for the third
time, an order to Conradin to lay down his arms, and appear in person
before the pontifical chair to justify his conduct, under pain of all
manner of excommunication. Conradin, who seems to have inherited a
wholesome contempt for the Pope, replied by despatching a fleet of
four-and-twenty Pisan galleys to Sicily. This was another blunder. He
should have gone himself, with all his forces, and certain success
awaited him. Charles of Anjou absent, his troops dispersed and
surprised, Sicily was lost to the French dynasty. But Conradin, like a
child as he was, thought only of a triumphant march on Rome and Naples.
For a paltry pageant, he threw away a kingdom. Whilst his adherents
gained ground in Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and other provinces, he
nullified their advantages by folly and delay. His only forced marches
were upon the road to ruin. A successful but unimportant ambuscade, in
which fifty of the enemy were cut off, completely turned his head. The
prisoners were conducted in triumph to Sienna; and Conradin and his
army, brimful of confidence, scoffing at pontifical anathemas, and
followed by a crowd of Ghibellines which every hour augmented, marched
upon Rome, taking the longest route by way of Viterbo, in order to show
themselves to Clement IV., then resident in that city. They passed under
its walls, crowned with verdure and flowers, more like bacchanals and
vintagers than men-at-arms. From the window of his palace Clement
witnessed the loose array. “Behold!” said he, “the sheep led to the
slaughter!” The prelates surrounding him remained silent, in respectful
doubt. The pontiff, penetrating their thoughts, persisted in his
assertion. “Truly,” he said, “in eight days nothing will remain of that
army.” His firm voice, his imposing countenance, his fervent piety,
impressed the hearers with a conviction that he spoke prophetically. The
event justified the prediction, the result of political
clear-sightedness rather than of divine inspiration.
Conradin’s reception at Rome completed his intoxication. He was
accompanied into the city by a chorus of young girls, singing and
tambourine-playing in the midst of the soldiers. Magnificently dressed
ladies showed themselves at the windows of the palaces; the people
thronged the streets. Every where he passed under triumphal arches,
hastily raised in his honour. They consisted of cords tied across the
street, and supporting, instead of the usual garlands of laurels and
flowers, the most precious objects the Romans possessed; rich furs and
garments, bucklers, rings, bracelets, arms and jewellery of all kinds.
Amidst public acclamations in honour of his courage and beauty, Conradin
ascended to the Capitol, escorted by the most illustrious Romans of the
Imperial party. What head of sixteen would not have been turned by such
incense! At last he quitted Rome at the head of five thousand German and
Italian men-at-arms, and of nine hundred Spanish cavaliers; surrounded
and pressed on all sides by a clamorous and jubilant multitude. He had
formed a plan which showed resolution and some military skill. Instead
of marching to Ceprano, the usual route of the conquerors of Naples, and
in which direction he was persuaded Charles (then besieging Lucera)
would advance to meet him, he conceived the bold project of turning his
enemy’s flank by penetrating into the Abruzzi, effecting a junction with
the Saracens of Lucera, and thence proceeding to Naples. But Charles was
too old a soldier to be easily outwitted. Advised from Rome of
Conradin’s departure and route, he abruptly raised the siege he was
engaged in, and marched day and night to Aquila, the key of the Abruzzi.
Thence he pushed on to the heights of Androssano, near the ruins of the
old Roman town of Alba, and appeared before the astounded Conradin, who
thus suddenly beheld in his immediate front an enemy he deemed far in
his rear. A day passed without blows: Charles made a reconnaissance;
Conradin, to frighten his opponent, to whom the fidelity of the
inhabitants of Aquila was most important, caused false deputies to be
introduced into his camp, dressed in municipal robes, and bearing
apparently the keys of their town. Informed of this event, Charles felt
very uneasy, but concealed his anxiety from all but three knights, with
whom he set out at nightfall and galloped to Aquila. He arrived at
midnight; the inhabitants were asleep. He struck upon the gates of the
citadel, and cried with a loud voice, “For whom do you hold this fort?”
“For King Charles,” replied the sentinel. “Then open, for I am the
king!” Reassured by the joyful reception he met, Charles returned to his
camp, weary with a ride that had lasted all night. But he had little
time for repose. Both armies were early afoot: on the one side the
flower of French and Provençal chivalry; on the other a medley of
Germans, Spaniards, and Italians. The forces were very unequal. Conradin
brought 6,000 horsemen into the field; Charles only half the number. On
both sides were equal fury, hatred, and eagerness to commence the fray.
Charles of Anjou’s audacity and impetuosity might possibly have had
disastrous results, but for the opportune arrival of Erard de Valéry,
constable of Champagne, his earliest friend and companion in arms.
“Erard was then very old, but still full of vigour. His colossal
stature, herculean vigour, and white hair gave him resemblance to the
centenary giant of an Arabian tale. Formerly he had refused to become a
priest, that he might remain in the society of princes and noble ladies.
Now, a true Christian soldier, he lived only in God. The old chevalier
was on his way from the Holy Land, returning to France with a hundred
good knights in his train. Whilst traversing the kingdom of Naples, he
heard of the king’s presence, and would not proceed without visiting
him.” Charles urged him to take part in the approaching fight. Erard
refused, alleging his age, his wish to die in peace far from human
turmoil, and, finally, a vow to fight only against infidels. Charles
overruled all objections, replying to the last one that his opponents
were excommunicated, and consequently worse than infidels. Then the wary
old chief arranged an ambush, which would have been utterly unsuccessful
with an ordinarily prudent foe, but which answered well enough with the
unlucky Conradin, who had not even made the necessary reconnaissances.
Charles, who had great deference for the Sire de Valéry, willingly put
himself under his orders, leaving him the direction of all things. The
army was divided into three bodies, of which the strongest, commanded by
Charles himself, was placed in ambush behind a hill in rear of the
Neapolitan position. The other two, sent forward against Conradin, were
beaten and cut to pieces, after a combat that lasted from sunrise till
six in the evening. Henry de Cousance, a French marshal, who resembled
Charles in stature and appearance, and who, with a purple mantle over
his armour and a crown upon his helm, took post in the centre of the
army, to personate the king, was killed early in the action. “Meanwhile
Charles of Anjou, in ambuscade with Erard de Valéry and his eight
hundred knights, trembled with rage. Burning with eagerness to strike
in, he rode up and down in rear of the hill, like a lion in his cage; he
was dying with impatience and grief, (_moriva di dolore_, says Villani,
_vedendo la sua gente cosi barattare_.) With inflamed eyes, he from time
to time looked Valéry in the face, thus silently demanding permission to
show himself and fight. He might have foreseen the massacre of his two
squadrons. The plan of battle adopted was likely to entail this
disaster. But what he had not foreseen was that it would be impossible
for him to support such a sight.” When the gallant Cousance fell,
pierced with a thousand blows, and Conradin’s army made the welkin ring
with exulting shouts of “Victory! the tyrant is dead!” Charles wept with
rage. But his promise to Valéry chained him to his rock of agony. What
follows is highly romantic and chivalrous. The knights who surrounded
him said, ‘So noble a fate is it to die for the justice of a royal
cause, that we would infinitely rejoice thus to lose our lives. Be well
assured, sire, that we will follow you every where, even to death.’ With
feverish impatience they waited the signal of Erard de Valéry, who
remained imperturbable. Suddenly Guillaume de l’Estendard (one of the
commanders of the troops already engaged) crossed the battle-field at
speed, feigning to fly, in order to draw the Spaniards on. They
followed. Then the old knight raised his enormous head and gigantic
person above the brow of the little hill, and said to the King,
‘_Marchons!_’ Charles was off like a dart, followed by Valéry and the
eight hundred chevaliers; they swept across the plain, and found
Conradin, Gualvano Lancia, and Frederick of Austria seated unhelmed and
unarmed on the bank of the little river Salto, like conquerors reposing;
whilst the German mercenaries were dispersed in search of booty,
stripping the dead and loading the spoils on carts. Charles and his
reserve of fresh and picked men had a cheap bargain of them, as also of
the Spaniards, who were taken prisoners, on their return from the
pursuit of Estendard, almost to a man. A complete victory, alloyed only
by a heavy loss of brave and devoted followers, remained to Charles of
Anjou. “Such,” says M. de St Priest, “was the celebrated battle of Alba,
improperly named the battle of Tagliacozzo, after a village more than
six miles from the scene of action. It is one of those deeds of arms of
which history will ever preserve the memory, less on account of the
greatness of the result, than for the dramatic interest attaching to the
quarrel and the men. On the one hand we see a young prince in the flush
of youth and brilliant valour, full of conviction of his good right, the
noblest and most unfortunate of pretenders; on the other, a warrior
terrible even to ferocity, but not less convinced of the legitimacy of
his cause, one of the greatest princes, and, beyond contradiction, the
greatest captain of his time.” M. de St Priest proceeds to attribute the
chief merit of the victory to his hero. “In this bloody game at bars,
full of snares, traps, surprises, where we see these terrible
condottieri, covered with blood, running after each other like
schoolboys at play, success was due less to the odd stratagem of Valéry
than to the rapid march, the four days’ race in the mountains, from
Lucera to Aquila. If Charles showed himself a great general, it was less
when in ambuscade behind the hill of Capello, than when, like a bird of
prey hovering above the wild Abruzzi, he fell with a swoop upon the
imprudent band, who deemed him astray in the defiles, lost in the
ravines, or fallen amongst precipices.”
Meanwhile Conradin, his army destroyed, his hopes shattered, was a
fugitive, with scarcely a follower. One or two days he abode in Rome,
protected by the Ghibellines; then, driven forth by the return of the
Guelfs, consequent on the ruin of his cause, he fled with Frederick of
Austria and a few Italian nobles, to the sea-coast, near the castle of
Astura, a fortress of the Frangipani family. Hiring a boat, they set
sail for Pisa, but were pursued and overtaken by a fast galley, whose
commander summoned them to bring to, and ordered the passengers to
repair to his quarter-deck. Conradin asked in astonishment who this man
was, and heard in reply that it was Giovanni Frangipani, master of the
neighbouring castle. At this name Conradin was overjoyed. “Giovanni is a
Roman,” he said; “his family have always been devoted to the house of
Swabia; they have been loaded with benefits by the Emperor Frederick; a
Frangipani will assuredly defend and befriend me.” Full of confidence,
he went on board the galley. “I am King Conrad V.,” was his hasty speech
to the lord of Astura, “and I have sought to reconquer the kingdom of my
ancestors.” Frangipani made no reply: the prince was astonished at his
silence, asked him to assist his flight, descended at last to
entreaties, offered, it is said, to marry his daughter; but the stern
pirate remained mute, and on reaching land, threw the prince and his
companions into a dungeon. Delivered up to Charles, they were led to
Rome on foot and in chains. “Oh, my mother!” cried Conradin, with bitter
tears, “you foretold this, and I was deaf to your words. Oh, my mother!
what grief for your old age!” He did nothing but sob the whole of the
road, Saba Malaspina tells us, and seemed half dead, and as if out of
his senses. But this weakness, which, in such misfortune and in a mere
child, was not unnatural, soon gave way to tranquil fortitude and
Christian resignation.
The ashes of the fires lighted in Rome to celebrate Conradin’s
triumphant passage had scarcely cooled, when he re-entered the walls of
the Eternal City, a fettered captive marching to his doom. Thence he was
taken to Naples, where an imposing and numerous tribunal assembled to
judge him. Many of its members were for a mild punishment, some for none
at all; others remained silent; one only opined for the death of the
accused. But Charles had determined on his young rival’s destruction; he
threw his word and influence into the scale, and sentence of
decapitation was pronounced on Conradin of Swabia, Frederick of Baden,
known as Duke of Austria, and the barons taken in their company. The two
princes had not expected such severity, and were playing at chess in
their prison when it was announced to them. They piously confessed, were
absolved by the Pope, who relented at this extreme moment, and were led
to the scaffold, which was covered with a red cloth in honour of the
victims’ royal blood. The executioner was there, with naked arms and
feet, and axe in hand. Conradin embraced him, having previously done the
same by his friend Frederick and the other sufferers—then laid his head
upon the block. When the axe rose, the French chevaliers who stood
around the scaffold fell upon their knees and prayed; and as they did
so, the head of Conradin rolled upon the crimson cloth. At this sight
the Duke of Austria started up as if crazed with despair; he was seized
and executed, uttering horrible cries. This butchery at last roused the
indignation of the French knights. Robert de Béthune threw himself upon
the prothonotary, who had read Conradin’s sentence, and with a blow of
his sword cast him down half dead from his platform. This strange and
unreasonable act, proceeding from a generous but savage impulse, was
greatly applauded by the spectators. Even Charles himself was compelled
to feign approval of his son-in-law’s violence.
No funeral honours were paid to Conradin and his companions. They were
buried secretly in the sand, on the shore of the sea, at the mouth of
the river Sebeto. Of their captivity, judgment, and death, M. de St
Priest declares himself to have given, with the fidelity of a
conscientious historian, an exact and truthful account. At the same
time, he subjoins various details that have obtained more or less
credence, but which he treats as fables. It has been said, that when
Conradin embarked at Astura, he gave a ring in payment of his passage;
that the boatmen who received the jewel took it to Frangipani, and that
the fugitive was recognised and arrested upon this romantic indication.
According to traditions, the Duke of Austria was executed the first, and
Conradin kissed his head, which, all severed and bleeding as it was,
still invoked the Holy Virgin. Robert de Béthune killed, it has been
affirmed, the prothonotary Robert de Bari, whose signature is found,
however, in many subsequent acts. And to crown all these marvels, it has
been confidently asserted that, after the execution of the two princes,
a masked stranger stabbed the headsman. Very recent and trustworthy
writers have recorded as fact, that Conradin, just before receiving the
fatal blow, threw a glove amongst the crowd, to be taken to Peter of
Arragon, to whom he bequeathed his vengeance and crown. A German
chevalier, Truchsess de Waldburg, (M. de St Priest calls him Waldburg de
Truchsess,) gathered up the gage, and with much risk and difficulty bore
it to its destination. The present historian discredits the whole of
this glove-story—a fiction, he says, of the invention of Sylvius
Piccolomini. He is more unwilling to doubt the following touching
tradition:—“One day the inhabitants of Naples beheld in their bay a
vessel of strange form and colour; hull, sails, and rigging were all
black. A woman in deep sables left the ship,—it was Queen
Elizabeth-Margaret, Conradin’s mother. At the rumour of her son’s
captivity she embarked all her treasures, and, gaining intrepidity from
her maternal love, this Elizabeth, previously so feeble and fearful that
she dared not leave her castles in Swabia and the Tyrol, exposed herself
to the perils of the sea, as bearer of her child’s ransom. But it was
too late. When she reached Naples, Conradin was dead. Then the unhappy
mother implored a single favour: she desired to erect a monument to him
she wept, on the spot where he had perished. Charles would not consent,
although he authorised the erection of a church upon the place of
execution, and contributed a considerable sum towards the work,—an
expiatory offering which, in conjunction with the useless ransom,
attested at once the grief of an inconsolable mother, and the tardy
remorse of a pitiless victor.” The church is to be seen at Naples, upon
the square of Santa Maria del Carmine; beneath its altar is the tomb,
with its inscription; the statue of Elizabeth stands there with a purse
in its hand. Surely this is confirmation strong of the truth of the
tradition! Unfortunately, church, inscription, and statue are all of a
recent date.
The events just detailed left Charles of Anjou at the pinnacle of power
and greatness. The magnitude of the danger he had run added to the
lustre of his triumph. Nothing now resisted him; he might almost be
styled the master of Italy. Every where the Guelfs drove the Ghibellines
before them; every where the Swabian eagle fled before the red and
silver lilies. The cause of the Ghibellines was lost. The fortunate
conqueror was on every point successful. His domestic prosperity kept
pace with his political and military success. Charles, then forty-two
years old, beheld himself surrounded by a numerous posterity. He had two
sons and three daughters. His queen, Beatrix of Provence, was dead; but
soon he contracted a second marriage with the young and beautiful
Margaret of Burgundy. Nature herself seemed to favour him; for in the
short space of three years, all his enemies, in any way formidable,
disappeared from the scene. Amongst others, the valiant and adventurous
Corrado Capece, taken prisoner by the implacable Guillaume de
l’Estendard, had his eyes put out, and was hung upon a gibbet of
extraordinary altitude, erected for the purpose upon the coast of
Catania. The Saracens of Lucera still held out. Besieged by a powerful
army, with Charles at its head, they resisted for six months, till
reduced to eat hay and roots. The bodies of stragglers from the town
being opened by the besiegers, only grass was found in their bellies. At
last they gave in. Charles, with a wise policy, showed them mercy,
contenting himself with banishing them from Lucera, and distributing
them amongst the towns of the interior. Although the piety of the first
French king of Sicily was carried almost to an exaggerated extent, it
did not degenerate into fanaticism; at least not into that fanaticism
which engenders persecution. He never adopted the prejudices of the time
against the Jews; on the contrary, he delivered them from the hands of
state inquisitors, and suppressed the distinctive mark they were
compelled to wear upon their garments. Financial considerations may not
improbably have stimulated, at least as much as the dictates of reason
and humanity, this enlightened spirit of tolerance; but still it is to
the credit of Charles that he did not, like many very Christian kings
and nobles of his and subsequent centuries, smite the Israelite with one
hand whilst stripping him with the other. The King of Jerusalem was
merciful to his subjects. Charles it was who first added this title to
that of King of Sicily, by purchase from the old Princess Mary of
Antioch, who called herself Mademoiselle de Jerusalem, and claimed that
crown, then little more than a name. When Charles, for a pension of four
thousand _livres tournois_, acquired her rights, he hastened to
vindicate them. They were disputed by Henry, King of Cyprus, who had the
advantage of possession; for he held Ptolemais, the last fragment of the
christian kingdom of Palestine. The Knights of St John supported him;
Venice and the Templars backed King Charles. The latter carried the day.
Master of southern Italy, armed protector of the north, Charles I. had
no longer aught to check him; the East was open before him. Already he
occupied a part of Greece. All that mountainous coast of Albania,
celebrated in our days for the devotedness of the Suliots, belonged to
him by the death of Helena Comnenus, Mainfroy’s widow, daughter of the
despot of Thessaly and Epirus. He also held the island of Corfu, that
natural bridge thrown between Italy and the East. The town of Durazzo
revolted in his favour, and called him within its walls. He swayed
Achaia and the Morea, and had constituted himself candidate for the
throne of Constantinople by marrying his daughter to Philip de
Courtenay, nominal heir to the Latin Empire, but living in reality on
the alms of his father-in-law. It seemed, then, that he had nothing to
do but to bid his fleet sail for Byzantium. But in the midst of his
ambitious projects he was interrupted by the new crusade, the last
undertaken, got up by Saint Louis, and in which Charles could not refuse
to join. The death of St Louis terminated the expedition; and after
dictating terms of peace to the sultan of Tunis, in whose dominions the
adventurers had landed, their return to Europe, by way of Sicily, was
decided upon. It was not consistent with Charles’s character to forget
or abandon an enterprise he had once decided upon; and on landing at
Trapani, he assembled the council of crusading kings and princes, and
proposed to them to re-embark for Constantinople. It was a bold and
sagacious idea to take advantage of this unusual assemblage of naval
forces to establish French power in the East; but Charles, indefatigable
himself, spoke to disheartened and disgusted men. All refused, and
Edward Plantagenet (afterwards Edward I. of England) rejected with
insulting energy his uncle’s proposition, declaring that he would winter
in Sicily, and afterwards return to Syria, which he did, without other
result than the wound cured by the well-known trait of conjugal
affection and courage of the virtuous and intrepid Eleanor of Castile.
Subsequently, the realisation of Charles’s ambitious designs upon the
East, long entertained, was continually prevented by one circumstance or
another, until at last the affairs of Sicily gave him occupation at
home, effectually precluding aggrandisement abroad. Essentially a man of
war, he nevertheless, in time of peace, showed skill, intelligence, and
activity in the administration of the kingdom of Naples. Had the distant
provinces of his dominions been as well governed, M. de St Priest
affirms that the Two Sicilies would not, during more than two centuries,
have been sundered and at enmity. But Charles abandoned the island
Sicily to his lieutenants. He positively disliked and ill-treated it,
and determined to dispossess Palermo of its title of capital, in favour
of the city of Naples, of which he was enthusiastically fond. Palermo
was too devoted to the house of Swabia; and, moreover, to maintain
correspondence with the north of Italy, with Rome, and especially with
France, it suited Charles far better to fix his headquarters and seat of
government at Naples. From the very first moment, he had been greatly
struck by the aspect of the latter city. The bright sky and sunny sea
and mountain amphitheatre that still charm and fascinate the tourist,
had a far stronger effect upon the prince whom conquest rendered their
master. He at once mentally fixed upon Naples as his capital, and
gradually accomplished his project—without, however, announcing it by
public declaration, and even continuing to give to Palermo the titles
establishing its supremacy. But, whilst retaining the empty name of
superiority, the Sicilian city felt itself substantially fallen; and
this may have been a cause, and no slight one, that its inhabitants were
the first to rise in arms against the galling yoke and insolent neglect
of their French rulers.
M. de St Priest’s third volume brings Charles to the zenith of his
fortunes. Invested for life with the high dignity of sole Roman senator,
he had the full support and hearty alliance of Martin IV.—a French pope,
whose election had been compelled from the conclave by the intimidation
of the sword. It was the first time since Charles had entered Italy that
the pontifical chair had been occupied by a man on whose docility he
could entirely reckon. Papal mistrust and jealousy had been the bane of
many of his projects. All apprehensions from that quarter were now
removed, and, strong in this holy alliance, he again prepared for his
eastern expedition. All was ready; at the head of five thousand men,
without counting infantry, and of a hundred and thirty ships, he had
only to give the order to steer for the Bosphorus. But in Sicily, the
storm, long brewing, was on the eve of bursting forth; and the powerful
armament intended for distant conquest, was found insufficient to retain
present possessions. The decline of Charles’s life was also that of his
power: his last days were days of heaviness, disaster, and grief.
TRAVELLING IN TAFFYLAND.
People wander into Wales principally in search of health and amusement;
a few for business; many without any purpose whatever, except the desire
of changing place and doing something. Any one who finds himself in
either of these classes need not fear being disappointed in the results
of his visit; for there is motion and change enough throughout the
country; sufficient business to make it worth the while of those who
know how to buy and sell; amusement for all who are worth amusing, and
health enough for all the world. Let no man, however, deceive himself
with the vain expectation that he shall have no ups and downs in his
pilgrimage through the country; let no one suppose that it is perpetual
sunshine there; nor let any one fondly think that, because he does
himself the honour of whipping a stream with fly and line, therefore, at
every throw a sixpound trout is sure to swallow his bait. Far otherwise.
The tourist in Wales must not be a man of many expectations, and then he
will not be disappointed; he must be content to go many a weary mile to
see some choice bit of scenery, and then to come as many or more miles
home again; he must make up his mind to have plenty of rain, wind and
cold, in the hottest day in summer; and he may cast his fly all the way
up from Conwy to Penmachno without having “one single glorious rise.” In
fact, he must be a patient reasonable man, and then he may adventure
himself in Taffyland without fear.
But if he is an acute observer of nature—if he loves to see the wildest
forms that mountains, and streams, and lakes can assume—if he likes to
make himself a denizen of the clouds, and to hold converse with the
children of the mist—if he can appreciate primitive national manners—if
he has ever so small a smattering of English history—if he can listen to
simple, plaintive music, and can be content to see birds, beasts, and
fishes all enjoying themselves in their original freedom, then let him
hasten to the mountain side, wander up the valley, stroll along the
river, or dream away his day by the shingle bank on the sea shore; he
will never repent of a visit to Wales.
The old road from Chester to Holyhead has been, and now is more than
ever, the main line of entry for Saxons and other foreigners into the
Cimbric land; but there are others quite as good. From Salop to Bangor
by Telford’s Parliamentary road, through some of the finest scenery the
country affords; or from Wrexham by Llangollen’s Vale and Bala’s Lake,
athwart the land to Dolgelly; or from Aberystwyth, creeping along the
sea-coast by Barmouth and Tremadoc to Caernarvon; or from Liverpool by
the fast-going steamers close under Orme’s Head to the Menai Bridge; any
of these ways is good. The main thing is once to get the foot fairly
planted on Welsh soil; the natural attractions of the country will be
sure to lead the traveller onward, and can scarcely lead him amiss.
Let no one come into Wales with a superfluity of luggage; the lighter
the impediments of travelling, the quicker and the cheaper is that
travelling performed. Let no one, unless absolutely forced to it,
pretend to travel alone; solitude is sweet no doubt, but Montaigne
remarks that it is still sweeter if there be somebody to whisper this
to; add to which that society enlivens the journey, and, as the Scotch
song has it,
“Company is aye the best, crossing owre the heather.”
Seeing too that conveyances are not so plentiful in the principality as
they might be; and that a car or chaise costs no more for four than it
does for one; let all those who are wise in their designs of Welsh
travel come by pairs, or double couples. Four is an excellent number for
a travelling party, since in case of dispute the votes are either even,
or are three to one; four make up a _parti carré_ at dinner; four
balance a car well; four can split into two parties if need be; and four
coming together to an inn are sure to fare much better than one solitary
traveller.
Don’t go to Wales in July, the wettest and windiest month of the twelve
that the principality has the honour of knowing. May is a sweet month;
the colours of the woods and mountains gay and delicate, with little
rain, and generally as much sun as is wanted. In June, every thing is in
full perfection, and there are long days to boot, and you may then
remain out under a rock all night without damage. August corresponds to
June, but the days are shorter, and the company to be met with is
commonly more select. September is generally the equivalent of May, but
the colours are glowing with the rich tints of autumn; and though the
days are still shorter, yet the sights to be seen in them will make up
for this falling off. No person goes among the mountains in winter,
except those who cannot help it; yet this is not their least
advantageous period for being witnessed; and those who can brave frost
and snow, and the unchained force of all the winds of heaven, will be
repaid for the labours and discomforts of such a visit.
For those who are fond of the rod, the gun, and the chase, North Wales
is a land of choice. Whether they bob for whales in Bardsey Sound, or
hunt up the brooks and prattling streams of Merionethshire, or seek the
banks of many a glassy mountain pool, they will find enough to repay
them for their trouble. The shooter will find, from the grouse of
Montgomeryshire and Caernarvonshire to the partridges and the snipes of
Anglesey, abundant occupation for his gun. And the huntsman, though he
cannot gallop over Caddir-Idris, will find many a wily fox more than a
match for him and all his dogs, among the desolate cairns of the
mountain tops, or may find hares as big as sheep, and fleet enough to
try the mettle of the best horse he will dare to ride after them.
Whenever a tourist wishes to pass his summer months healthily and
agreeably, but is in doubt whither to go, let him start off for
Wales—North Wales—forthwith; and let him not return till wood and water,
and hill and dale have ceased to call forth his admiration.
Do not trust too implicitly to guidebooks, good traveller; take them and
consult them; but beware of their lying propensities. They have
inveigled many a loving subject of her Majesty’s into a scrape, and have
proved the dearest things he ever admitted into his pocket. Go with your
eyes open; go with a little common sense; go to be pleased: don’t go to
find fault. Make up your mind to rough it if need be; and don’t give
yourself the airs of my Lord Duke at every little wayside inn that your
dignity may be forced to put up at. You may then travel smoothly and
cheerfully through the Cimbric territory.
Take also this along with you. The Welsh are tremendously slow coaches.
Indolent, pig-headed, and careless, the _dolce far niente_ is their
motto throughout life; and, were they left to themselves, they would
positively retrograde through unwillingness to go a-head. It is of no
use hurrying them; a Welshman was never in a hurry in his life; time,
like water, is to him of little value; he has plenty and to spare of it,
and the waste of either commodity is not thought of. In Wales, they let
both run away often to little purpose; they have fewer “water
privileges” than any one could imagine; and they turn their privilege of
an _ad libitum_ supply of leisure to very poor account. So do not hurry
a Welshman; for you will not gain any of _his_ time, but will only lose
some of your own, by so doing.
The true way to enjoy Wales, and to understand the country, is to go and
fix your quarters at some quiet little country inn in a spot to your
taste; and remain there for a fortnight—a month—or as long as your
_gusto_ endures; walking up the whole country around, until you know
every crook and cranny of it, until it becomes in fact your “ancient
neighbourhood.” Many, or rather innumerable are the spots where you may
so fix yourself, and where your enjoyments, though simple, may be
extreme. If you are a bachelor, you can get clean beds, sheets of driven
snow, plenty of good milk, mountain mutton, and bread and butter _à
discrétion_; and what the deuce does a man want more? If he is young,
and in good health and spirits, and cannot fare upon this, let him put
up his traps and go to the antipodes. Or, if you are in the softer
predicament of having with you what, when you and I were young, you
know, used to be called _poetice_, the “girl of your heart”—but what now
in Polichinellic phraseology is termed the “wife of your bussum”—why,
even in this extremity, you may find room for two in any inn that you
venture to light upon. The lady must not be too fine in her notions, it
is true; she must be of that breed and mettle that will enable her to
face the mountain breeze, and wipe with hasty foot—as friend Gray
says,—the dews of the upland lawn; to meet the sun or the moon, or any
other natural phenomenon that is to be encountered on the hill-side. In
short, she must be the sort of girl that can mount a rough pony, or
scramble over a stone wall, and not care for her bonnet or her locks in
a pelting shower, but must be content to follow her liege lord, and love
him—and love his pursuits too, whether by the purling brook, or on the
misty height. Be sure of it, my friend, that with such a companion as
this, Welsh scenery—mountain scenery—nay, _any_ scenery, will have for
you a double—ay, a tenfold charm.
Men enjoy mountains: women enjoy waterfalls. There is no saying why it
is; but the fact is positive. Perhaps it may be that men can toil up the
rugged steep with greater ease, and therefore enjoy themselves the more
when they reach the top. Perhaps it is that there is something grand,
and bold, and rough, and dangerous, in the very nature of a mountain,
which the masculine mind is alone capable of fully understanding. In
waterfalls, there is all the beauty of form, and light and graceful
motion, and harmonious sound, and cooling freshness, and ever-changing
variety that woman always loves; and there are overshadowing trees, and
an escape from the noontide sun, and the hum of insect life, and
moss-grown stones, and soft grassy banks. Waterfalls and their adjuncts
have a kind of mystic influence about them that acts with all-persuasive
energy on the female mind: hearts like stones are worn down by their
action, and the swain has often been indebted to the Naiad for the
granting of his prayer.
Well; wherever you may be, whether single or double, any where in Wales,
the first thing to do is to make a bargain with your landlady, (Welsh
inns are always kept by women,) whereby you may be “boarded and lodged
and done for” at so much a day, or a week, or a month, or whatever time
it may please you to stay. This is the very best of all plans for
“taking your pleasure in your inn;” you know then the exact cost of your
stay—the precise damage done to your pocket; you dine comfortably,
without fearing that you are swallowing a five shilling piece in the
midst of each chop, and you can witness the last day of your sojourn
arrive without dread of that unpleasant winding up—the bill. You may get
boarded and lodged comfortably, nay luxuriously, as far as mountain
luxury goes, for a pound a-week: you may take your full swing of the
house for this; and your landlady will ask for a repetition of the
honour next year when you depart. So let no man say that living in Wales
is extravagant; it is only the _savoir vivre_ that is the scarce
commodity.
And if you would know where to go and find comfortable quarters of this
kind, and at this rate, then take our advice, gentle reader, and listen
to a few experiences. Go to Bala, and fish the lake there till not a
trout is left in it, and cut away at mine host’s mutton and beef, when
you come back from your day’s excursion, as though you had not eaten for
a week; and turn in by ten at night,—not later, mind; and be up again by
five, and out on the mountain side, or amid the woods by six, and home
again by seven to your morning fare. So shall you have health and
happiness, and freedom from ennui the livelong day.
Or go to Ffestiniog, up among its mountains, and ramble over to the
lakes below Snowdon, and visit the company at Beddgelert and
Tan-yBwlch—rather aristocratic places in their way, and made for
travellers with long purses. At Ffestiniog you are in the neighbourhood
of the best mountain scenery of Wales; and as for vales and streams, you
have such as you will never see elsewhere.
Or else go to Bettws-y-Coed near Llanrwst, the village of the confluence
of so many streams and valleys; that sweet woodland scene, that choice
land of waterfalls, and sunny glades, and wood-clad cliffs. Here you may
have variety of scenery in the greatest perfection; and here you may
enjoy the happiest admixture of the wild and the beautiful that the
principality can boast of. It is indeed a lovely spot; and, provided the
visitor has some intellectual resources and amusements within himself,
one that the tourist can never get tired of. It will bear visiting again
and again. _Decies repetita placebit._
But, dear sir, if you are bent upon making the grand tour, and if you
positively will see the whole of the country, then by all means start
from Chester, and make a continual round until you arrive at Shrewsbury;
so shall you see the whole length and breadth,—the bosom and the very
bowels of the land. You must go and see Conwy, Penmaen Mawr, and “the
Bridge,” as it is still emphatically called—Telford’s beautiful
exemplification of the catenary curve—and then go and hunt out Prince
Edward’s natal room in Caernarvon’s towers; and then clamber up Snowdon;
and then go down again to Capel Curig and Beddgelert, and so pass by
Pont Aberglaslyn to Tan-y-Bwlch, Ffestiniog and Dolgelly; and then mount
Cadair Idris; and then run up to Bala and Llangollen, and so stretch
away to the abode of the “proud Salopians.” And a very agreeable tour
you will have made, no doubt; but you will not know Wales for all that.
You have not been along the byeways, nor over the dreary heath, nor into
the river’s bed, nor under the sea-crag’s height: you will not have seen
a tithe of the wonders of the country. You must see all these great
places of course: but you ought to look after much more than this; you
must wander over the broad lands of the Vale of Clwyd, and look up all
its glorious little trout streams; you must go to the solitary heights
of Carnedd Llewelyn, and the Glidr above Nant Francon; and you must get
up to Llyn Idwal, and have nerve enough to climb over and under the
rocks of the Twll Du; and you must go to the very end of Llŷn, or else
you will never know what it is to lie down flat at the edge of the
Parwyd precipice, and look down six hundred feet sheer into the sea,
with not a blade of grass nor a stone between you and the deep blue
waters fresh from the Atlantic. And you must climb over the bleak
Merionethshire hills to seaward, and hunt up the lonely fishing pools
that abound in their recesses; and you must dive into the green wooded
valleys of Montgomeryshire, and learn whence the Severn draws all its
peat-brown waters. There is occupation enough in this for the longest
summer that ever yet shone on Wales; you may start on your pilgrimage
with the first green bud of spring, and end it with the sere and yellow
leaf of autumn: but it is only in such lengthened and lonely rambles as
these that the real beauties of the country are to be seen, and that the
full loveliness of nature—unsophisticated nature—is to be perceived.
Take your fishing rod with you, take your sketch book; explore the whole
country; bring it away with you both in mind and on paper: leave care
and trouble behind you; banish all reminiscences of town; go and be a
dweller with the birds and the dumb animals, with the leaves and the
stones, with the oak in the forest and the carn on the mountain, and
gain thereby a fund of health and satisfaction, that shall endure for
many a long day and year, nor be exhausted even then.
You are too old a traveller, we will suppose, to need many instructions
as to the general apparatus required; only mind and err rather on the
side of scantiness than otherwise; you can get all you really want at
the first town you come to. Who is the rash man that would risk a good
hat or a good coat on a Welsh mountain? Alas! he shall soon know the end
of his gear, and lament over the loss of his pence. The very idea of
going into cloud-land with anything on that you care about spoiling, or
rather that can by any possibility be spoiled! Is it not your privilege,
your aim, your pride, when you get among the mountains, to be able to go
right on end, through stream and bog, over rock and swamp, without
stopping to think of habilimentary consequences? You may tell an old
traveller by the “cut of his jib;” it is only your thorough cockney that
comes down in his new green shooting coat, and his bright shepherd’s
plaid trowsers, just out of the tailor’s hands, and a hat with the shine
not yet taken out of it. Look at that tall, thin, bony, sinewy man,
going along the road there with an easy gait, neither stiff nor lax,
neither quick nor slow, but always uniform, whether up hill or down
hill, or on level ground, always at the same pace; his knees never
tightened, his instep never approaching to a hop; but in all weathers
and in all seasons, over rough or smooth, never falling under three nor
quite coming up to four miles an hour. And look at his low-crowned felt
hat,—he wears a Jim-Crow one, by the way, in very hot weather,—why, you
would not give it to a pig-driver, so brown and battered it seems: and
look at his funny little coat; neither a coat nor a jacket,—neither
black, nor brown, nor blue, but a mixture of all colours, just as the
rain may have been pleased to leave portions of its dye remaining. And
his trowsers, shrunk to mid-leg proportions, are just covering the tops
of his gaiters, yet allowing a bit of his gray worsted socks to appear.
A stout stick which he twirls merrily in his hand, and a light leathern
wallet, not bigger than your letter-bag, thrown over one shoulder,—or
else his fishing-basket coming snugly under his elbow. He is the true
pedestrian,—he is the ancient traveller,—he is the lover of the Cymro
and the Cymraeg,—he is the man that enjoys himself thoroughly in Wales.
Once upon a time, dear friend, we found ourselves coming over Moel
Siabod, that wild and beautiful hill rising over the eastern side of
Capel Curig; swinging away in our simplicity of heart, and purposing to
reach the lonely fastness of Dolwyddelan by noon, on a piping hot July
day. We had crowned the mountain ridge, and had come half-way down the
eastern slope, when we found ourselves at the edge of a great peat bog,
with never a path, nor a stone, nor any thing to guide us through it.
Beyond and below it lay the valley for which we were making, green,
smiling, and beautiful, as Welsh valleys generally are. Above and behind
us rose the bare crags of the mountain, darkening into a purple crest as
their summits reached the fleecy clouds. We had nothing to do but to
adopt the glorious old rule of following our nose; and so, without
further ado, we tried to pick our way across the bog. We have a
reminiscence of sundry skippings from tuft to tuft of heather, and of
wonderful displays of agility; and at last we began to congratulate
ourselves on the immense display of juvenile vigour which we were
making. One more leap on to a fine bright piece of green grassy sward,
and we were safe. Beyond it lay a ridge of rock and terra firma to carry
us onward. One more spring and we should have crossed the bog. So now
here goes for it; three paces backwards, a good swing with the
arms,—one, two, three, and away!—plump into the very middle of the green
sward,—and _through_ it, down, down, down, until our hat and stick alone
remained aloft! Why, ’twas the most treacherous place of the whole; a
kind of syren’s isle that tempted men to destruction by the beauty of
outward form,—though beauty of sound, indeed, there was none. How we got
out has always remained a mystery; but we floundered and tumbled about,
and cut more extraordinary figures with our arms than we had done at any
time the last ten days with our legs, until at length we seemed to crawl
out like a fly out of a treacle pot, and to attain some drier ground.
Our black velvet shooting coat, and our nice white ducks had never made
such an approximation of colour before: we had put on the sad and sober
russet brown in which dame nature so much delights, and we came forth
from our grassy bed a good specimen of the tints of the mountain
dye-house. It was enough; our resolution was taken:—half an hour’s sharp
walking down the descent brought us to the banks of the Lledr; we were
not five minutes in selecting a proper spot; and there we immediately
converted ourselves into our own washerwoman, after the most primitive
fashion that any antenoachite ever adopted. In another half hour we were
beginning to look whitish again; and by the end of the sixty minutes we
were clad in garments on the most approved hydropathic principles; wet
bandages we had plenty of,—for if any one had offered us the wealth of
India, we could not at that moment have produced a single dry thread on
our body. But here our pedestrian resources again came to our aid; the
sun shone more bright than ever; we were in the bottom of the valley:
the heat was intense. The village was still four miles off, and by the
time we arrived abreast of the welcome notification of “_Cwrw dda_,” we
were dried, ironed, mangled, folded, and plaited, more commodiously,
(though less uniformly,) than ever our buxom little laundress could have
done for us.
Once and again we got into a brown predicament in Wales, not so easily
got rid of, nor leaving so few disagreeable reminiscences. You will
excuse us for mentioning it, if you please; but our _tableau de mœurs_
would not be complete without it. And here we beg leave to give notice
that fastidious readers may at once close their eyes and read no more,
or else skip over this page and try another. If they become offended,
‘twill be their own fault; what business have they to be prying into our
secrets?
Once upon a time we did a rash thing: we made up our mind—and also our
knapsack—to go to Bardsey Island. Now, ’tis a hundred to one that you
never heard of Bardsey Island; and that, though your careful parents may
have paid many a guinea per quarter for you, while at school, to learn
Geography and the use of the Globes, you never yet were questioned by
your usher as to where Bardsey Island was, nor what sort of a place it
might be. Know, then, that it lies, a solitary green isle, some three
miles or so from the extreme south-western point of Caernarvonshire,—a
sort of _avant-poste_ to Wales, like the Scilly Isles to Cornwall. On it
live some five-score of inhabitants, real natives, supporting themselves
on oysters and lobsters, and other marine monsters. An occasional
dog-fish is there reckoned a luxury. ’Tis a vastly curious place,—the
oddest kinds of sea-birds to be found there of any spot under the
sun,—at least in these latitudes; the rarest shells; the most unique
sea-weeds; the greatest pets of periwinkles; and such loves of limpets!
We were off, then, for Bardsey:—do not go there, dear reader—take our
warning by the way, and remain rather at home. We got to a place with a
most out-of-the-way name—Pwllheli; a sort of _ne plus ultra_ of
stupidity and dulness; and from thence we made our way in a car to one
of more euphonious denomination, Aberdaron. This was really a lovely
spot, embosomed in a deep valley, at the corner of a romantic bay, with
an expanse of snow-white sand, sufficient to accommodate all the bathers
in England,—the sea of as deep a blue as at Madeira, and rocks like
those of Land’s End, with the eternal spray of the ocean playing over
them. A picturesque old church, partly converted into a school, partly
into a pigeon-house—and the main entry to which was by one of the
windows, stands at one end of the village with a miserable pot-house at
the other. There is a stream and a bridge for loungers to lean and spit
over; but other amusement in the place is none. As for public
accommodation, it has not yet been thought of; strangers do not come
there. None but the adjoining boors come thither to sot and gossip;—and
as for our dear mellifluous Anglo-Saxon tongue, ’tis a thing never heard
of. On arriving there and exploring the localities, and arranging for a
boat to Bardsey next morning, we began to think about a bed, and soon
perceived, on reflection, the total absence of any suitable
accommodation within the limits of the village. But mark you the
excellence of Welsh hospitality. The grocer of the place, the man of
“the shop” _par excellence_, hearing of, or rather seeing us in a
quandary, sent us his compliments, with a polite request that we would
take up our quarters under his roof for the night. This was genuine
hospitality; we hesitated not; and a better turn out in the way of
feeding we have not often met with. Broiled steaks of salmon, fresh
caught in the adjoining stream, fowls, and a good slice of Cheshire
cheese, soon set our gastronomic capabilities at ease. Porter—some of
Guinness’s best—and a glorious jorum of whisky and water, moistened our
clay, and comforted our inward man. None of your wishy-washy whisky, or
poor pale limpid compound, such as you buy in London; but some of the
real potheen, just arrived from Wicklow—thick, yellow, oily, and slow to
come out of its narrow-necked bottle. And then such a bouquet!—none but
a genuine smuggler ever tasted the like. ’Twas a thing to be tasted, not
described,—the real nectar of the Druids—if not of the Gods. Being
somewhat fortified by these stout appliances, and having discussed
half-a-dozen of Pontet’s best Havannahs, we mounted the rickety stairs
that led through the lofts of our host’s dwelling to a goodly dormitory
at the further end. And here the worthy man had really set out for us
his best bed: all the little china and plaster images were ranged in
prime order on the mantel-piece; and pictures of the Queen of Sheba and
the Prodigal Son adorned the walls with unfading brilliancy. The bed
looked as clean as ever we saw a bed in our lives; there was an odour of
lavender about the room, and we were soon between the sheets, lost in
dreamy oblivion.
We awoke: ’twas a lovely morning, with the earliest sun shining brightly
in through the lattice; and we thought in our emotion to spring out of
bed. Off went the bed-clothes at a bound, and we sat erect!—but how
shall we describe our horror? We had gone to bed more or less white—more
or less European in the tinge of our skin: we awoke of a glaring red,
or, where the crimson dye was less vivid, we bore a mottled appearance,
like a speckled toad. And, as Gulliver once lay among the Lilliputians,
who ran from him, on his stirring, in frightened thousands, so there
were now our accursed night visitants scampering away from us in every
direction, possible and impossible, by thousands—nay, by myriads. The
bed was literally _brown_ with them; and ever, as we moved a limb, fresh
gangs of latent devourers fled from beneath, and scoured across the
sheets. They had lost the supernatural form our dreams had given them,
and assumed the more homely one of ordinary fleas—of fleas of all sizes
from a pea to a pin’s head! Old Nereus gave us some relief, for we
rushed into his arms as soon as doors could be opened, and bolts forced
out of their sockets; but, for many a long day after, we bore about us a
vivid impression of our visitants at Aberdaron.
Do not, therefore, venture to sleep in a Welsh cottage; nor scarcely in
a farm-house: trust yourself only to an inn,—your chances of sound rest
and an untenanted bed are at least more favourable there;—but if ever
you are benighted and forced to remain away from headquarters, make up
your mind fairly to bivouac it amid the fern and the heather, or else
sit up at your vigils by your host’s fire-side. The chirping cricket and
the purring cat shall then be your sole companions.
We might detain you till doomsday with these “incidents of travel;” but
we shall leave you to make your own experiments;—yet, ere you venture
into the wilds of Taffyland, peruse and carry with you for your use and
edification the following:—
TRIADS FOR TRAVELLERS.
Three mountains that every body goes up: Snowdon, Cadair Idris, and
Penmaen Mawr.
Three mountains that nobody will repent going up: Holyhead Mountain,
Carn Madryn, and the Breiddin.
Three mountains that nobody goes up: Plinlimmon, Arrenig, and Carnedd
Llewelyn.
Three castles that every body sees: Caernarvon, Conwy, and Harlech.
Three castles that every body ought to see: Beaumarais, Criccaeth, and
Denbigh.
Three castles that nobody sees: Flint, Dolwyddelan, and Castell Prysor.
Three wells that every body should go and drink from: Holywell, Wygfair,
and Ffynnon Beuno.
The three great waterfalls of Caernarvonshire: Rhaiadr-y-Wenol, the
Falls of the Conwy, and the Falls of the Ogwen.
The three great waterfalls of Merionethshire: Pistill-y-Cain,
Rhaiadr-y-Mawddach, and Rhaiadr ddu.
The three grandest scenes in Wales: Llyn Idwal, Y-Glas Llyn, and
Pen-y-Cil.
The three sweetest scenes in North Wales: Beddgelert, Tan-y-Bwlch, and
the Banks of the Menai.
The three beautiful lakes: Llyn Gwynant, Llyn Peris, and Llyn Tegid.
Three vales that every body ought to see: the Vale of Ffestiniog, the
Vale of Llanrwst, and the Vale of Dolgelly.
The three rich vales: the Vale of the Clwyd, the Vale of the Dee, and
the Vale of the Severn.
Three passes that every body ought to go through: the Pass of Llanberis,
the Pass of Pont Aberglaslyn, and the Pass of Nantfrancon.
Three good pools for anglers: Llyn Tegid, Lyn Ogwen, and Llyn Cwlid.
Three good rivers for fishermen: the Dee, the Conwy, and the Vyrniw.
The three finest abbeys of North Wales: Valle Crucis, Cymmer, and
Basingwerk.
The three finest churches in North Wales: Wrexham, Gresford, and Mold.
The three bridges of North Wales: Conwy Bridge, Menai Bridge, and
Llanrwst Bridge.
Three out-of-the-way places that people should go to: Aberdaron, Amlwch,
and Dinas Mowddwy.
Three islands that are worth visiting; Puffin Island, Bardsey Island,
and the South Stack.
Three places that no man dares go to the end of; Twll Du in the Llidr,
Cilan Point in Llyn, and Sarn Badric off Barmouth.
Three things that nobody knows the end of; a Welchman’s pedigree, a
Welchwoman’s tongue, and the landlord’s bill at ——.
Three things, without which no pedestrian should adventure into Wales; a
stout pair of shoes, a light wallet, and a waterproof cape. (Some
learned travellers have proposed to substitute “stick” for “wallet” in
this Triad, but the fact is that, when you go to Wales, you may cut your
stick.)
The three companions of the Welsh tourist; a telescope, a sketch book,
and a fishing rod.
The three luxuries of travelling in Wales; a stout pony, a pleasant
companion, and plenty of money.
Three things which, who ever visits Wales, is sure to take away with
him; worn-out shoes, a shocking bad hat, and a delightful recollection
of the country.
Three things without which no man can enjoy travelling in Wales; good
health, good spirits, and good humour.
The three nastiest things in Wales; buttermilk, cwrw dda, and bacon and
eggs.
Three things that the tourist should. _not_ do; travel in the dark—wait
in doors because it may be a rainy day—and try and keep his feet dry.
The three qualifications for properly pronouncing the Welsh language; a
cold in the head, a knot in the tongue, and a husk of barley in the
throat.
The three languages which a man may speak in Wales when he does not know
Welsh: that of the Chinese, that of the Cherokees, and that of the
Houhnyhms.
The three languages which will carry a man all over Wales without
knowing a word of Welsh; that of the arms, that of the eyes, and that of
the pocket—Farewell! dear reader, _nos-dda-wch_!
LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD HARDWICKE.[20]
The Law of England forms the most remarkable characteristic of the
country. The Law is the spirit of the national liberty, the guardian of
the national religion, and the foundation of the national government.
Britain has the proud distinction of being almost the only country on
earth, where no act of arbitrary power can be suffered—where no man’s
person, property, or conscience, can be subjected to insult with
impunity—and where every man has _rights_, and all are alike under the
safeguard of Law.
We propose to give a rapid sketch of the history of this great principle
in England.
It is singular that the most intellectual nation of the ancient
world—Greece—has not left us any system of law. Cicero speaks with
professional scorn of all jurisprudence except the Roman. He would not
have spoken thus of the Mosaic law, if he had known it. But one of the
most extraordinary circumstances of the Hebrew commonwealth, is the
general ignorance of its incomparable institutions, which prevailed
among the most active inquirers of the northern world. But law existed
from the earliest periods in Greece, though its name was often and
curiously changed. In the time of Homer, the name of law was _Themis_,
or establishment. In the time of Hesiod, the name was _Nomos_, or
distribution. In after times, it was _Dikè_, or justice. The cause of
the Greek want of system was said to be the _number_ of judges in their
courts, which rendered the decision rather matter of popular sentiment
than of fixed rule.
The systematic nature of the Roman law arose from there being in general
but _one_ judge in each court. The two prætors—the one for the city, and
the other for the external jurisdiction—were annually appointed, and
were accustomed, on entering on their offices, to state the rules on
which they intended to act. Those rules became gradually embodied, and
finally formed the groundwork of the Roman law.
In the language of Rome, Law was _Lex_, from _Lego_, as the proposal of
the rule was _read_ by the magistrate to the assembly of the people. The
Anglo-Saxon name was Laga, from _Legen_, to lay down—from which comes
our word Law.
Law in England ascends as high as the time of the Druids, who, however,
had no written code. But they seem to have left us the custom of
Gavelkind—the division of the property of an intestate between the widow
and the children, and the burning of a widow found guilty of her
husband’s murder.
The Roman, Pictish, and Saxon invasions, with the Heptarchy, filled the
country with a general confusion of laws, until the time of Alfred. This
great king and man of genius undertook to remodel the whole constitution
of the West-Saxon monarchy—a design, for whose execution he has been
praised by all the philosophic lawyers, as exhibiting the highest
sagacity.
The principle of his reform was, to make every man answerable to an
immediate superior for his personal conduct, and that of his
neighbourhood. For this purpose, England was divided into tithings and
hundreds, and perhaps into counties, all being under a supreme
magistrate—the king. He also collected into a volume all the customs of
the various districts, which he issued for the guidance of the several
country courts. Those in their turn were liable to account to the king’s
courts, which were kept in the royal household, and which travelled with
this great king, whose life seems to have been chiefly occupied in
traversing the kingdom as high minister of law, and teaching its
principles to his people.
The Danish invasions shook this code, but had not the power to crush it.
It was renewed by King Edgar, a man of vigour and talents. The digest
was completed by his grandson, Edward the Confessor—the whole forming
the common law, or law _common_ to the whole realm.
The principles of the Saxon law, which were the principles of their
fathers in the German forests, and were the principles of truth and
nature, were briefly these:—The establishment of the Wittena-gemote, or
assembly of wise men—a species of parliament, without which no new law
could be made, or old one changed; the election of all magistrates by
the people; the hereditary descent of the crown; the commutation of
capital punishments, on the first offence, for a fine; military service
in proportion to land; forfeiture of land for treason, but _not_
corruption of blood; the descent of lands to all the male’s equally,
without right of primogeniture, (a rule unworthy of Saxon wisdom;) the
use of county courts in ordinary cases, with courts held before the king
in the higher; last, and most important of all, trial by jury (though
trial was also held by ordeal.)
Of those principles, some were evidently unfit for subsequent
civilisation; and some refined themselves. But the whole system, when
compared with the old Roman code, and with many of the codes of Europe
which followed it, exhibits an extraordinary evidence of the manliness
of feeling, and justness of conception, existing among the Saxon
ancestry of England.
In the eleventh century, the Norman Conquest burst in upon the country
with the force of an inundation, and swept before it throne, liberty,
and _laws_. The influence of Rome now began to act powerfully on the
people. Ecclesiastical courts were formed, separate from the civil, and
the Romish priesthood were gradually exempted from the secular power.
Another formidable innovation was in the “royal forests.” The Norman
kings were “mighty hunters,” and whole counties were stripped of their
population, to give room for beasts of chase. They transplanted the
forest laws of the Continent into England, and the penalties of their
game laws were terrible. In the Saxon times, though no man was allowed
“to kill the king’s deer,” yet every man was allowed to kill the game on
his own estate. But the Norman law made the king the proprietor of _all
game_, and no man could kill bird of the air, or beast of the field,
without express royal license, by a grant of _free-warren_, which was
more for the purpose of preserving the game than giving a right to the
subject.
With one exception, the Norman invasion was an unequivocal calamity.
That exception was the right of primogeniture—a right essential to the
establishment of a nobility, to the permanence of families in a
condition of honour, and to the prevention of a gradual pauperism and
degradation of society, as the lands became divided more and more. In
all others, it was a sudden and mischievous extinction of all popular
rights, and of all the principles of national progress. It made law
arbitrary by curtailing the power of the county courts, and giving it to
the king’s Norman justiciers, who thus became masters of every thing,
and, by their Norman subtleties, altogether confused the national law.
It introduced the feudal law, which was tyrannical in its essence. It
almost excluded the national language from all public use, Norman-French
alone being used in all the courts. It introduced the trial by combat,
the origin of that custom which, under the name of duelling, authorises
murder, provided the murdered man has previously had formal notice that
his murder was intended; and also, that he had a chance of adding the
murder of his adversary to his own. And to this Norman tyranny was due
the whole long series of ruinous wars, which involved both England and
France in infinite wretchedness, for little less than a hundred and
fifty years.
The Saxon law continued in this state of humiliation until the reign of
John, with slight occasional advances towards freedom. But, in this
reign, the severity of the forest laws roused the barons into
insurrection, and the King was forced to sign the two famous
regulations, the Forest Charter, and the Great Charter. The former
diminished some of the cruelties of the forest law, and the latter laid
the foundations of the Constitution, by restoring the general principles
of the Saxon law. It protected the subject from the severity of royal
fines and royal loans, and considerably narrowed the wasteful
expenditure of the throne. In private rights, it established the
testamentary power of the husband over part of his estates, and the law
of dowery. In public police, it established a uniformity of weights and
measures, gave protection to commercial strangers, and forbade the
alienation of lands by mortmain. In matters of public justice, it
forbade all denials and delays of justice, established the court of
Common Pleas at Westminster, to relieve the suitor from following the
courts round the country; directed assizes and annual circuits to be
held, and appointed inquests. It established the liberties of London,
and of all the cities, towns, and ports of England. And finally, and by
its noblest act of power, it declared the protection of every man in his
life, liberty, and property, unless convicted by the judgment of his
peers, or the law of the land. This was perhaps the noblest document
ever published by a people, and well deserves its name of MAGNA CHARTA.
In the Popish controversy of our day, the existence of Magna Charta has
been adduced as a proof of the freedom encouraged under Popery. But it
is forgotten that the whole proceeding was instantly denounced by the
Pope, and laid under anathema. It was a recurrence to the laws of their
Saxon ancestors, demanded by the severe necessities of the time, and
originating in impulses of human nature too strong for the bondage of
the national superstition.
The glorious Reformation in the sixteenth century produced a hidden and
powerful change in the aspect of English law. The Papal supremacy fell,
and relieved the law of a most intolerable obstruction. The crown became
the true head of the government. Man no longer gave a divided allegiance
to an English monarch and an Italian monk; and the appointment of the
bishops was thenceforth taken from foreign hands, and invested in the
sovereign of the realm. Freedom now began to make palpable progress; for
although the prerogative was still unabated, and was often tyrannical in
the reigns of Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth, there was a growing tendency
to its abatement; and its use by Elizabeth was in general so lenient, as
to be scarcely perceptible.
A general change in English society also powerfully co-operated with
this progress. Peace had brought commerce, and commerce wealth to the
merchant: the lower orders, of course, shared in the general prosperity,
and their condition became more important in the national eyes, and in
their own. The nobles, disdaining commerce, became unable to compete
with the new generation of opulence, and dissipated their estates, which
fell into the hands of the citizens. On the other hand, the throne,
enriched by the confiscation of the monasteries, became hourly more
independent of the barons; and the contest for power was evidently to be
thenceforth determined between the throne and the people.
The glories of Elizabeth, her services to religion, and her gentle
exercise of the sceptre, had reconciled the nation to the prerogative.
But the accession of James awoke the nation: his manners were offensive,
his habits were unmanly, he wanted the dignity of Elizabeth on the
throne, and he wanted the spirit of her government among the people. His
death left a legacy of revolution. His son had been intended by nature
for private life, but he was marked by misfortune to be a king. Brave
without fortitude, and graceful without sincerity, he would have made an
incomparable figure in his own court, if he had not been encumbered with
the high duties of a throne. Charles was destined to be undone, from the
time when he began to revive the obsolete statutes of the forest law,
sustain the severities of the Star Chamber and High Commission courts,
and raise arbitrary taxes in the shape of tonnage and poundage. The
disuse of parliaments alienated from him every lover of liberty.
Hampden, a name deserving of all honour in the history of freedom,
struck the first blow at the new fabric of tyranny, by his resistance to
ship-money. The King himself hurried on his ruin, by concessions as
precipitate as his demands had been unjustifiable; and this most
melancholy of all struggles ended in the most melancholy of all
consummations—a military tyranny.
The restoration of the Stuarts gave us the Habeas Corpus Act—an
illustrious memorial of national good sense, and of national security.
Magna Charta had gone no further than to forbid imprisonment, contrary
to law. The Habeas Corpus gave the man power to release himself, and
punish his injurers.
The glorious Revolution of 1688 gave another impulse to the whole system
of English liberty. It pronounced the authority of law to be supreme. It
gave us the Bill of Rights, the Toleration Act, and the Act of
Settlement. It justified the doctrine of necessary resistance; it
regulated trials for high treason; it modelled the Civil List; it made
the administration of the income accountable to parliament; and
constituted the judges independent of the throne.
The constitution was now complete, or if not, all the improvements still
necessary to make it such, were prepared in the nature of the noble plan
which was thus laid down by the nation. The changes which have since
occurred in the general law have been scarcely more than attempts to
simplify its proceedings. The changes in parliamentary law have been
more perilous, through the Reform Bill of 1831 following the Popish Bill
of 1829. The change in international law has been marked by a feature
whose peril seems too imminent, yet whose practical effect is still to
be ascertained,—the establishment of direct diplomatic intercourse with
the Popedom. Protestantism is justly alarmed at this sudden abandonment
of one of the fundamental principles of 1688; at the direct
encouragement which it must give to all the demands of Popery in
England; at the triumph which, for the first time in two centuries, it
gives to the factious spirit of Popery; at the aid which it may give to
its superstition; and at the national hazards which may be involved in
the rash attempt to subdue Irish violence by Papal instrumentality, and
even at the political perils which may result from the authorised
presence of a Popish Italian at the court of a Protestant sovereign. The
palliatives of the measure are certainly trifling. The ambassador is not
to be an ecclesiastic, and the Pope is not to be called the “sovereign
pontiff.” But a Jesuit may be the same in a plain coat and in a red hat,
and the Pope is the _master_ of the Papist, call him by what name we
will. Such is statesmanship in the nineteenth century!
The Lord Chancellor Hardwicke was the son of a country attorney, who was
probably a respectable man——for he was needy, though the town-clerk, and
seems to have had some friends, though in the profession of the law. The
biographer labours hard to prove that he had ancestors—a matter which
may be conceded to all men—and that, if some of them were poor, some
were rich; a point perfectly within the possibilities of human things.
He contends further, that a _branch_ of the name of Yorke had held the
mayoralty of Calais in the fifteenth century. But as he gives us no
knowledge of the _distance_ of that branch from the trunk, and as all
have had kings as well as beggars among their progenitors, being the
common descendants of Adam, there is not much use in those discoveries,
and not the slightest balm to the hurt pride of the Hardwickes; for the
whole dwindles down to the distressful but common conclusion, that in
the seventeenth century the family were on the decline, and all their
honours were diminished into the humility of a provincial solicitor.
But we come to wiser information. The first mention of the future
chancellor is in the following document in his personal journal:—
“Philip Yorke, born at Dover the 1st day of December 1690, and baptised
on Thursday 9th of December.”
The learned biographer wastes some more of his paragraphs in proving
“that poverty is no disgrace;” but it must be acknowledged that it is
neither comfort nor credit, and that it would have done no harm whatever
to the attorney, if he had been in possession of a clear thousand
a-year.
His son Philip was naturally intended to follow his own profession, and
about his sixteenth year was sent to learn it in the office of a
solicitor of the name of Salkeld, brother of the celebrated sergeant. It
was a rather curious circumstance, that of the young men then in
Salkeld’s office, there were two future Lord Chancellors, a Master of
the Rolls, and a future Lord Chief Baron: Jocelyn, subsequently
Chancellor of Ireland; Strange, Master of the Rolls; Parker, Chief of
the Exchequer; and Yorke, who was destined to act as high a part in
administration as in law.
There are some slight suspicions that young Yorke had been _articled_ to
Salkeld, and a _clerk_ to his brother the sergeant. But against these
_imputations_ the biographer battles with a desperate fidelity. It is a
pity to see so much zeal thrown away; for the Great Chancellor, as he
was deservedly called, would not have been an atom the less great if he
had been _articled_ to the one brother and _clerk_ to the other. He
might have been only the more entitled to praise for the eminence to
which he rose. We respect the aristocracy so far as it ought to be
respected; but we are not at all inclined to look for the pedigree of
talents in the dusty records of a worn-out genealogy, or feel that the
slightest degree of additional honour attaches to learning and
integrity, by the best blazonry of the Herald’s Office.
The young student must have soon given evidence of his capacity; for
Salkeld, a man sagacious in his estimate of his pupils, recommended that
he should try the larger branch of the profession, and put his name on
the books of the Temple, which was done Nov. 29, 1708. We have then a
dissertation on the propriety of keeping Terms by dining in the hall of
the Temple. This, too, is so much wisdom thrown away. A good dinner is,
under all circumstances, a good thing. It requires as little apology as
any conceivable act of human existence. In the hall, the young barrister
is at least in the company of gentlemen, which he perhaps would not be,
but for that contingency; if he does not learn much law, he at least
learns something of life; and if he has a spark of ambition in his
frame, it may be blown into a flame by the sight of so many portly Chief
Justices, and Lord Chief Barons, with an occasional glimpse of a retired
Lord Chancellor, reposing on a sinecure of £5000 a-year.
Another weakness of the biographer is an eloquent effort to _prove_ that
a barrister, whose talents raise him to the summit of his profession, is
but little the worse for the want of a university education. It would
have been quite sufficient to say, that Philip Yorke rose to be the
first lawyer of his age, and Lord Chancellor, without having ever set
foot within the walls of a college.
Yorke, at the commencement of his career, was fortunate in an
introduction through Parker, one of his fellow-students at Salkeld’s, to
Lord Macclesfield, Lord Chief Justice, to whose son it is said that he
was engaged as law-tutor. The Chief Justice received him at his table,
took an evident interest in his progress, and patronised him on every
important occasion. Yorke’s manners were as gentle as his intellect was
acute; and such a man would naturally be received with favour at the
table of a person so high in rank as Lord Macclesfield. But it has never
been said that he humiliated himself for that honour; and through life
he had a quiet way of gaining his point, of which a curious instance was
given in his earliest days.
The wife of Salkeld was a thrifty personage, who, evidently thinking
that her husband’s pupils might be employed in other operations than
scribbling parchments, occasionally sent him on her messages, and even
to execute some of her commissions in Covent Garden Market. Yorke
obeyed, but on giving in the account of his expenditure on those
occasions, there appeared frequent entries of coach hire, for “celery
and turnips from Covent Garden,” a “barrel of oysters from the
fishmonger’s,” &c. &c. Salkeld, perceiving this, remarked to his wife on
the expensive nature of this “saving,” and Yorke was no longer employed
as her conveyancer of celery and turnips.
He had also some pleasantry as well as point, of which an anecdote was
told by the late Jeremy Bentham. Powis, one of the judges of the King’s
Bench, one day at a lawyers’ dinner expressed to Yorke his “surprise” at
his having got into so much business in so short a period. “I conceive,”
said the old fool, “that you must have published some book, or be about
publishing something; for look, d’ye see? (which seems to have been a
favourite phrase of his,) there is scarcely a cause before the court but
you are employed in it.” Yorke answered with a smile, “that he had
indeed some thoughts of publishing, but that he had yet made no progress
in his book. Powis, priding himself on his sagacity, begged to know its
nature. He was answered that it was a “Versification of Coke upon
Littleton.” The judge begged a specimen, on which Yorke recited—
“He that holdeth his lands in fee
Need neither to quake nor to shiver,
I humbly conceive; for _look, do you see_,
They are his and his heirs for ever.”
It may fairly be presumed that a laugh went round the table; but Powis
was so fully convinced that he had hit upon the true reason, that on
meeting Yorke some months after, he inquired gravely about the progress
of his volume.
However, Powis seems to have been a mark for the wits, as we find by
some lines on the Bench, by the memorable Duke of Wharton:—
“When Powis sums up a cause without a blunder;
And honest Price shall trim and truckle under;
When Eyre his haughtiness shall lay aside,
And Tracy’s generous soul shall swell with pride,
Then will I cease my charmer to adore,
And think of love and politics no more.”
Yorke was now beginning to feel his way in his profession; and if
poverty had been his original stimulus, he had a fair prospect of
exchanging it for wealth. The _dictum_ of Thurlow on this subject is
proverbial. When asked by some friend to advise his son as to “the way
he should go” to rise at the bar, that rough functionary said, “Let him
spend all his fortune—then marry, and spend his wife’s fortune; and then
let him return to his books, and _he may_ have some chance of business.”
But Yorke, without spending either his or his wife’s fortune, had
already taken the first step to official distinction by entering
Parliament, May 2, 1719. He was chosen member for Lewes in Sussex. The
simplicity of this transaction affords a curious contrast to the
performances of the present day. The Duke of Newcastle sent a letter to
the “free and independent electors,” evidently directing them to elect
his friend Mr Yorke. The letter was duly answered by an address from one
hundred and thirty-two electors, in this style:—
“We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, the constables and inhabitants
of the borough of Lewes, having heard your Grace’s letter publicly read,
do not only herein return your Grace our hearty thanks for the _honour_
you have done us in recommending so fit a person as Mr Yorke, to serve
as one of our representatives in parliament for this town, for the
present vacancy, but also beg leave to assure your Grace, that we do
unanimously and entirely approve of him, and shall be ready _on all
occasions_ to show the regard we have to the favour your Grace has
pleased to lay upon us.
“Your Grace’s most obliged and
“Obedient humble servants.”
The orthography of those honest people differs from modern
penmanship,—but the _principle_ of the affair, even in our polished day
of liberalism, probably differs no more than a close borough of the year
1719 differs from an open borough of 1848. The successful barrister, and
promising member of parliament, now made the most important step which
any man can make, and took to himself a wife. It would be unfair to say
that in this instance he was guided by the calculations which are so
often charged upon his profession. But there can be no doubt, that
whatever might be the pleasure of his new connexion, it had all the
merit of prudence. The lady was a widow, young and pretty, and with a
fortune of £6000, which at that time was probably equal to twice the sum
in our day. But probably a charm of no inferior importance was her being
the niece of Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls. The whole
transaction was sufficiently juridical. Sir Joseph had sent a letter
with Yorke, to be presented to Mr Charles Cox, the father of the lady,
who had married Mary, the eldest daughter of Lord Somers. On reading the
letter, the old gentleman desired Yorke to “leave his rental and
writings” with him; and upon Yorke’s acknowledging that he had neither,
Cox expressed his astonishment that his brother-in-law, Sir Joseph,
“should have recommended such a person to him.” On writing to Sir Joseph
on the subject, he received an answer, “not to hesitate a moment in
accepting the offer, for that the gentleman who made it, and was now
content with his daughter’s £6000, would in another year expect _three
or four times the sum with a wife_!” The letter had its effect, and the
marriage took place.
Yorke then took a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and began to go
circuit; there his biographer stoutly and justly defends him against the
imputation of “intriguing for business,” alleged in Lord Campbell’s
“Lives of the Chancellors;” an imputation which has not been sustained
by any part of his subsequent conduct. For, though charged with singular
anxiety to realise a fortune, there is no evidence of any meanness in
its pursuit. And his professional distinction, his natural talent, and
his rank as a member of parliament, (a matter of high consideration in
those days) rendered his possession of business natural and easy.
But he was soon to have official distinction. When going the Western
Circuit, he received a letter from the Lord Chancellor, announcing to
him “his Majesty’s pleasure to select him for Solicitor General;” an
office into which he was sworn in March 1720, at the age of thirty!
Much professional dissatisfaction was exhibited on this promotion of so
young a member of the bar; and for some period the attorneys exhibited
an equal reluctance to employ him in important causes. But, as a leader,
he soon showed qualities which had been partially concealed in his
inferior rank, and reconciled at once the public and the profession to
his precedency. It has been remarked, that some of the most
distinguished judges have _not_ been successful in the lower rank of
their profession, while it has not rarely happened that the most
distinguished advocates have failed as judges. The qualifications for
the bench, and those for the bar, or even for the leadership of the bar,
have considerable differences, and the management of the great
principles of law is evidently a separate task from the dexterity of
detail.
The father of the Solicitor General, who had the happiness to see his
son’s promotion, died in the following year. It appears that Yorke, who
was now Sir Philip, kept up a constant and kind correspondence with his
family, which was, of course, strengthened by his having obtained the
recordership of Dover, an appointment which he valued very highly, and
retained through life.
The volume contains some striking remarks on the often discussed
question—“why lawyers seldom succeed as parliamentary speakers.” And the
reason assigned, and truly assigned, is, that lawyers have something
else to do. The man who is occupied all day in the courts, has no time
for parliamentary subjects. He comes into the House fatigued, and
unsupplied with the detail which is _necessary_ to give effect to any
address in so business-like an assembly. He merely gives an opinion and
sits down. If he attempts more, he generally fails; or his best success
is an escape. Thus the two greatest advocates whom England and Ireland
have ever seen, Erskine and Curran, were ineffective in parliament—the
only distinction being, that Erskine was laughed at, while Curran was
laughed with. With these extraordinary men, who had every quality of the
orator, and whose vigour of argument took the bench by storm, while the
flashes of their imagination threw brilliancy over the dreariest topics,
there could be no conceivable source of failure, except in their want of
preparation for the peculiar objects of debate.
But there is also another, and an obvious consideration. There are but
few orators in the world, and these few are not always either lawyers or
members of parliament. But, when the true orator appears, he is _felt_,
and he would be felt in an assembly of Esquimaux. He requires no
complacency in his audience; he communicates with their spirit, at once.
He touches strings which, however unawakened before, are in every living
bosom; he finds echoes in the heart, which a thousand other voices might
have called on in vain.
At the same time it must be admitted, that the knowledge which law
demands, is of high importance to any success which hopes to be
_permanent_ in the House; that its nature in the questions constantly
coming before an assembly of lawmakers, is indisputable; and that the
perfection of a debater would consist in his possessing the knowledge of
a lawyer, combined with the taste, talent, and expansive views of a
statesman. The lawyers in parliament have always possessed great weight;
and though the instances of their arriving at the Premiership are
_remarkably_ few, (we recollect but one, the late Mr Perceval,) they
have always possessed a large share of parliamentary power.
A case of some peculiarity occurred at this time—it was the proposal to
commute the sentence of death on some criminals, on condition of their
submitting to inoculation for the small-pox. The case was laid before
Raymond and Yorke, the Attorney and Solicitor General; whose answer was
in this form;
“The lives of those persons being in the power of his majesty, he may
grant a pardon to them on such lawful condition as he may think fit.
And, as to this particular condition, we have no objection in point of
law; the rather, because the carrying on this practice to perfection,
may lead to the general benefit of mankind.”
The small-pox was then almost a plague: it assailed all classes; and
some of the royal children, and many of those of the nobility died of
it. Its extraordinary power of disfiguring the features of the survivors
made it scarcely less dreaded than its mortality. In tropical climates
it swept off the population by thousands. Mankind, in our age, cannot be
too grateful to the good fortune, or rather to that interposition of
providence, which, by giving us the discovery of Vaccination, has at
length comparatively freed the world from this most afflicting and most
fatal disease.
But Yorke was soon called on to perform other and more difficult duties
than those of humanity. The influence of the exiled Stuarts was still
powerful. Superstition and self-interest had sustained a close connexion
in Great Britain. The manners of the Brunswick line had their share in
sustaining this influence. They were singularly unpopular. The first
George was coarse in manners, and vulgar in mind. All about him, even to
his follies, was imported from Hanover; and he was never able to
discover the distinction between an empire and an electorate. The second
George was a man of ability; but while he was superior to the habits of
his predecessor, he had equally repulsive habits of his own. The king
was at once subtle and uncouth, artificial in his designs, yet rude in
their execution; clear-headed in his views, yet confused in his
government. Germanism clung to him, to the last. He, too, could not
discover the distinction between the throne of the first country of
Europe, and the sovereignty of a German province. The private history of
his court, also, was the reverse of flattering to the morals of his
country; and the public feeling often rebuked them with singular vigour
of tone.
On the other hand, the misfortunes of the Stuarts, though most amply
deserved, had thrown a tinge of romance over their fate; and even their
insults to its freedom in religion and constitution were partially
forgotten. The chivalric character of the Prince threw an additional
interest on his story; and the contrast between a gallant young man,
determined to struggle for the throne of his forefathers, and the crafty
and egoistical character of the king, offered strong probabilities for
the success of an enterprise worthy of a competitor for the crown of
England.
On the 12th of May 1722, an announcement appeared in the newspapers,
stating that the “Lord Mayor of London had received a letter from Lord
Townshend, one of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State,
informing him, that the king had received intelligence of a conspiracy,
in concert with traitors abroad, to raise a rebellion in favour of the
Pretender.”
A few days before, a proclamation had appeared, offering a reward of
£500 for the apprehension of one Weston, formerly clerk to Gray’s Inn
Chapel. Warrants were immediately issued for the apprehension of many
other persons, of whom the principal was Atterbury, the Bishop of
Rochester, who was arrested at his deanery in Westminster, carried
before the Council, and committed to the Tower.
Shortly after, Lords North and Grey were arrested in the Isle of Wight;
and about the same time the principal agent, one Layer, a barrister, was
also seized. North was committed to the Tower, where, on his lady’s
desiring admission to him, and being refused, he exhibited a specimen of
that pleasantry which seems to have belonged to the name. Opening his
window, “Madam,” said he, “this is a _convent_ for men, and not for your
sex.”
Layer’s trial soon followed. The evidence proved that he had been
engaged in a plan for a general insurrection, for the overthrow of the
established government, and for bringing in the Chevalier. The king, the
prince, and the ministers, were to be seized, the Tower was to be taken,
and the army was to be bought over. The correspondence on this subject
had been seized at Layer’s chambers, in Southampton Buildings, and was
in his handwriting.
An instance of what may be regarded as the etiquette of English law, was
given on his trial. The prisoner had been carried to the court at
Westminster in fetters, of which he complained to the Chief Justice as
an insult. To this it was replied, that he had made an attempt to
escape; on which the judge said, that the use of the fetters was
justifiable. But, on his being brought into court, his counsel applied
to have the fetters taken off; to which the judge replied, “The irons
_must_ be taken off: we shall not stir until the irons are taken off.”
The Solicitor General spoke with great effect in reply to the prisoner’s
counsel, and Layer was found guilty. He was several times reprieved, in
the hope of obtaining evidence sufficient to implicate persons of higher
rank, who were strongly suspected, Layer being evidently but an agent.
However, he was at length executed.
A bill of pains and penalties was then brought in against the Bishop of
Rochester. Among the witnesses in his favour was the celebrated
Alexander Pope, who came forward to depose to the Bishop’s domestic
habits and studies. But it was remarked, that his performance on this
occasion only showed that his abilities were not formed for exhibition
in a court of justice. He made but an indifferent figure as a witness:
he had but little to say, and that little he blundered.
Atterbury himself, however, made a better display. It having been
insinuated that Sir Robert Walpole had tampered with the Bishop’s
witnesses, for the purpose of involving other persons of condition,
Walpole appeared in person to disavow the charge. Atterbury fastened on
him, and exerted all his dexterity to make him contradict himself. “A
greater trial of skill,” observed Speaker Onslow, “than this scarcely
ever happened between two such combatants,—the one fighting for his
reputation, the other for his acquittal.” The bill of pains and
penalties was brought in by eighty-seven peers to forty-three. Atterbury
was banished; and the following paragraph in one of the journals gives
the account of his departure:—
“June 19, 1723.—Yesterday, between twelve and one, the deprived Bishop
of Rochester set out from the Tower in the navy barge, and was delivered
up to Captain Laurence, commander of the Aldborough man-of-war, lying in
Long Reach. Two footmen in purple liveries attended him, himself being
in a lay habit of gray cloth. Great numbers of people went to see him
take water, many of whom accompanied him down the river in barges and
boats. We hear that two messengers went on board the man-of-war, to see
him set on shore at Ostend, whence, it is said, he will proceed to
Aix-la-Chapelle, after staying some time at Brussels.”
The Bishop, however, was set on shore at Calais, from the violence of
the weather, which made the passage to Ostend dangerous; and on being
told at landing, that Bolingbroke had received the king’s pardon, and
had arrived at the same place on his return to England, he pleasantly
said, “Then I am _exchanged_.” Pope observed that “the nation was afraid
of being overrun with too much politeness, and could not gain one great
genius, but at the expense of another.”
That Bolingbroke was a man of remarkable talent, must be believed from
the evidence of his public career. But the fame of Atterbury seems to
have had no firmer foundations than his being the intimate of Pope, and
a Jacobite. He had the scholarship of an academic, but he gave no
exhibition of ability in public life. His sermons are extant, and are
trifling. As a Jacobite, he must have been incapable of comprehending
the value of liberty, regardless of Protestantism, and faithless to his
king. His mitre alone probably saved him from a severer punishment than
exile. But the simple fact that a Protestant bishop conspired to bring
back a dynasty pledged to Popery, and notorious for persecution, is
enough to consign his memory to historic shame.
Another curious instance, involving a bishop, occurred about this
period. Wilson, the Bishop of Sodor and Man, in consequence of his
refusal of the holy sacrament to the wife of the governor of the island,
was thrown by him into prison, and fined. The bishop appealed to the
Privy Council, by whom he was released, on the opinion of the Attorney
and Solicitor Generals, and the fine was remitted. The Earl of Derby,
the “sovereign” of the island, contended that it was a “free nation.”
But he was not able to show that its freedom implied the power of
controlling the spiritual functions of the bishop.
On this subject, however, it must be acknowledged that the right of
refusing the sacrament to individuals who might be disapproved of by the
clergy, was obviously dangerous, and, though retained in words, is
justly abandoned in practice by the Establishment. Such a practice would
imply that the clergyman could penetrate the secrets of the heart: it
would also give a most offensive power of public insult, a strong
temptation to private revenge, and might inflict an irreparable injury
on personal character, without any public trial, or any means of
personal defence. It is also observable, that no man _can_ ascertain how
suddenly and effectually conversion may change the whole tenor of the
mind; while the mere fact of coming to the communion-table naturally
implies a returning sense of duty. Some of the half Popish
disciplinarians of our day, who talk much more of the church than they
think of Christianity, have attempted to renew this harsh and hazardous
practice. But the man of sense will avoid the insult; and the Christian
will acknowledge that, if rebuke is to be administered at all, it ought
to be in the shape of private exhortation, and not in the arbitrary and
exasperating form of public shame.
The most painful part in the office of Attorney General is the duty of
prosecuting high criminals. The Earl of Macclesfield now put this duty
to the test. A charge was laid against the Chancellor for corruption in
the sale of masterships in Chancery, and the embezzlement of the
suitors’ money in their hands. He was impeached by the Commons, and
tried by the Lords, was found guilty, and fined £30,000. But on the
questions being put that he should be rendered incapable of serving the
king, or sitting in parliament, both were negatived; but, for the honour
of parliament, the one only by forty-two to forty-two, the Speaker
giving, of course, the vote in his favour; and the latter by forty-five
to thirty-nine. The trial lasted twenty days, and naturally excited
great attention. The ground of his escape from official ruin, (for
nothing could save him from public shame,) was probably his favouritism
at St James’s—a favouritism which, unluckily for the honour of the
courtiers, seems to have remained undiminished.
The conduct of the Attorney General has been censured, as ungrateful to
his early patron; but the censure is unfounded. He did all that he
could: he refused to join in the prosecution, and avoided this duty with
some difficulty. The Earl’s guilt was notorious; nothing could save him.
It was no part of the Attorney General’s virtues to thwart public
justice, nor was it in his power. He simply consulted the delicacy of
old friendship, by refusing to urge its progress. It has been even
asked, Why did he not _resign_? Such is the absurdity of querists. His
resignation could not have saved the Chancellor, who, after all, escaped
with the easy sacrifice of a comparatively small sum from a purse
believed to be plethoric with the public money.
Yorke still continued to advance in reputation and office. The deaths of
the Chancellor and the Chief Justice were followed by the appointment of
Talbot to the woolsack, and of Yorke to the Chief Justiceship, with an
increase of the salary from £2000 to £4000 a-year, and the peerage, by
the title of Baron Hardwicke, from an estate which he had purchased in
the county of Gloucester.
He was now on the verge of his highest promotion. The Chancellor Talbot
died in February 1736, after five days’ illness, at the age of
fifty-three.
An entry in Lord Hardwicke’s private journal gives a curious and
characteristic account of his promotion. “On Monday the 14th of
February, about five in the morning, died Charles Talbot, Lord High
Chancellor of Great Britain. The _same forenoon_, being at the sittings
in Westminster Hall, I received a letter from Sir Robert Walpole,
desiring to speak with me on the event of that morning, and wishing that
I would dine with him that day in private. I went accordingly, and after
dinner he proposed the Great Seal to me in the king’s name. Thereupon I
took occasion to state to him, that I was now in a quiet situation,
which, by practice, was become easy to me; that I had no _ambition_ to
go higher; and, though I had the most grateful sense of his majesty’s
goodness, desired to be left where I was.”
Sir Robert perfectly understood this “nolo episcopari” style, and
pressed the appointment. We are a little ashamed for the delicacy of the
future Chancellor; for he now told the minister, that the Chief
Clerkship of the King’s Bench being likely to fall soon into his gift,
which he might grant for two lives for the benefit of his family, he
must have an equivalent! After some bargaining, Yorke offered to take
the reversion of the Tellership of the Exchequer for his eldest son.
Walpole objected, that the king “disliked reversions.” And well he
might; for the Tellership of the Exchequer was said to have amounted (in
subsequent times) to £40,000 a-year! The bargain was at length
struck—the Tellership was given, and Hardwicke was Chancellor. A note in
Horace Walpole’s Memoirs adds point to the transaction: it says that
“Walpole, finding it difficult to make Hardwicke give up the Chief
Justiceship, told him that, if he refused, he would give the Seals to
Fazakerly. ‘What!’ exclaimed Hardwicke, ‘Fazakerly! he is a Tory,
perhaps a Jacobite.’ ‘All very true,’ replied Walpole; ‘but if by one
o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerly, _by two_, becomes Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of _the stanchest Whigs in England_!’”
The Chancellor, as a scholar and a man of the world, was consulted by
his friends on occasional rules of life; and, in answer to a request of
the Marchioness of Annandale to give his opinion on the course of
education proper for her son, Hardwicke, in giving a detail of the
studies proper for a nobleman, as classics, mathematics, law, &c.,
alludes to foreign travel.
He observes “that, in former times, the people of Britain were observed
to return home with their affections more strongly engaged towards the
well-tempered constitution and liberty of their own country, from having
observed the misery resulting from the military governments abroad. But,
by an unlucky reverse, it (now) sometimes happens that, from being
taught to like the fashions and manners of foreign countries, people are
led to have no aversion to their political institutions, and their
methods of exercising civil power.”
He then adverts to the still more serious evil which our own generation
feel every day:
“The Protestant religion being established here, is one great security,
not only of our religious, but also of our civil liberty. That ocular
demonstration of the gross superstitions and absurdities of Popery which
travelling furnishes, was formerly thought to fix the mind in a more
firm attachment to the former, and abhorrence of the latter.” He then
adverts to the culpable change frequently wrought by foreign life on
this wise and salutary feeling. “I fear the case is now somewhat
otherwise; with this further ill consequence, that many of our young
men, by a long interruption of the exercise of their own religion,
become absolutely indifferent to all.”
The truth of the case, however, is, that travelling is _not_ the source
of the injury done to the habits and principles of the English: it is
_residence_ abroad that does the irreparable mischief. Travelling
enlarges the mind; residence abroad narrows, degrades, and vitiates it.
No Englishman who has long resided in a foreign city, (except, perhaps,
in a university, for the pursuit of learning,) is ever fit for any thing
when he returns: he is a practical idler, and pitiful lounger round
coffee-houses and gaming-tables. He discovers that his “feelings are too
refined” for the roughness of English life—that his frame is “too
delicate for anything but a southern climate”—boasts of his
sensibilities, while he is leading a life of the most vulgar and gross
vice—until, beggared by debauchery, or worn out with disease, he drops
into the tomb, without leaving a regret or a manly recollection behind
him. For all the higher purposes of life he had long been ruined—without
country, without public spirit, without a sense of duty, he has lived
only to eat and drink, to retail the gossip of the hour, and yawn
through the day. He has abandoned _all religion_, and professes to think
all creeds alike. His morals are of the same quality with his religion,
and he creeps through society as worthless as the worm that shall soon
feed on his better half—his body—in the grave.
Lord Hardwicke had now full opportunity for the display of all his
talents; and their combination in one man was certainly an extraordinary
evidence of the powers of discipline and nature. He was at once a
first-rate lawyer, a first-rate statesman, and a first-rate public
speaker. Any one of those high attainments might bring sufficient to
make the business of a life—in him they were the easy attributes of a
master-mind.
His oratory was not of the school which afterwards gave such eminence to
Chatham. It had none of the brilliant impetuosity of that Demosthenes of
English orators; but it had a captivation—the captivation of eloquence
and grace—which gave interest even to the driest details of the
tribunal. Lord Camden, himself a powerful public speaker, thus described
Hardwicke on the bench:—
“In the Court of Chancery, multitudes would flock to hear the Lord
Chancellor, as _to hear Garrick_. His clearness, arrangement, and
comprehension of his subject, were masterly. But his _address_ in the
turn which he gave to all, whether he was in the right, or was ‘to make
the worse appear the better reason,’ was like _magic_.”
His high employments now brought opulence with them; and he purchased
from Lord Oxford the fine estate of Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire, which
had come into the Oxford family by marriage with the Duke of Newcastle’s
heiress. In 1740, Philip Yorke, the Chancellor’s eldest son, married the
daughter of Lord Breadalbane, and grand-daughter of the Duke of Kent.
Horace Walpole, in his correspondence with Conway, thus smartly sums up
the good fortune of this most prosperous family:
“Harry, what luck the Chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so
great a man. But then, in accidents. He is made Chief Justice and Peer,
when Talbot is made Chancellor and Peer. Talbot dies in a twelvemonth,
and leaves him the Seals, at an age when others are scarcely made
solicitors. Then he marries his son into one of the first families of
Britain, obtains a patent for a marquisate, and eight thousand pounds
a-year, after the Duke of Kent’s death. The Duke _dies in a fortnight_,
and leaves them all! People talk of fortune’s wheel that is always
rolling; troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled
along with it.”
The present attempt to give legislative power to the Jews, an attempt
whose success would inevitably change the _Christian character_ of the
legislature, gives a revived interest to the following decision of the
great Chancellor. A legacy of £12,000 having been left by a Jew, “for
establishing an assembly for reading and improving the Jewish law,” and
the case having been brought into court, the Chancellor decided against
the application of the legacy. The note of this judgment, recorded in
his own note-book, is as follows:—
“I was of opinion, that this appeared to be a charitable bequest or fund
for promoting and propagating the Jewish religion, and consequently
_contrary to law_. For that the Christian religion _is part of the law
of the land_, and involved in the _constitution of this kingdom_,
according to my Lord Hale in Taylor’s case, 1 Ventr., and my Lord
Raymond in Wolston’s case; and that it differed widely from the cases of
charitable benefactions to the meeting-houses or congregations of
Protestant dissenters, which are tolerated, and regulated by the
Toleration Act. Therefore, I _refused_ to decree for this charity.”
In March 1745, died the celebrated Sir Robert Walpole: of all the
ministers of George the Second the most trusted, and of all the
ministers of England the most unpopular; of all the statesmen of his day
the most successful, and certainly, of all the public men of England,
regarded, in his own time, as the most unscrupulous. If it be doubted
that he was personally more unprincipled than other ministers, to him
unquestionably was due the _practice_ of corruption as an established
principle of government. That any minister could have dared to adopt
such a system in England, is to be accounted for only by the rapid
changes of party since the beginning of the century, the changes of the
Succession, the timidity of the press, yet but in its infancy, and the
unsettled nature of the Brunswick throne.
In late years, Burke, inflamed with the love of splendid paradox, and
delighting in the novelty of imagining personal virtue in the midst of
public vice, amused his genius with throwing a factitious lustre over
the memory of Walpole. But the voice of contemporary writers has been
since amply echoed by the judgment of history. Walpole _was_ a
corrupter; and, if the progress of his system had not been broken short
by his fall, and by the hurried successions of ministers from each side
of the House alternately, the government would perhaps have perished, or
could have purified itself only by a revolution.
Walpole was a first-rate man of _craft_; his sagacity was vigilant; his
industry was indefatigable; his speech plausible, and his management of
the uncouth and suspicious King dexterous in a remarkable degree. But he
lowered the whole tone of public life. No act of magnanimous policy ever
originated with Walpole. He made no attempt, or but of the feeblest
order, to add to the national intelligence. He encouraged none of the
higher provinces of the arts, learning, or science; and, though he gave
mitres to Butler, Gibson, and Sherlock, yet the religion of England
languished scarcely less than its philosophy. It was what Burke himself
subsequently termed its succeeding period, “burgomaster age,” and
parliament was scarcely more than a Dutch council, until Chatham came
and startled it again into life. Walpole obtains credit with posterity
for the moderation of his wealth. But, beginning as the son of a country
gentleman, he purchased a fine estate; he built a magnificent mansion,
Houghton; he collected one of the finest private picture-galleries in
Europe; and he always lived, so far as we can learn, in great affluence
and expenditure.
But the country was suddenly to be tried by a new and most formidable
hazard. News arrived in London that the Prince Charles Edward, the
eldest son of the Pretender, had landed in Scotland, had raised the
standard of the Stuarts, had been joined by some of the clans, and was
determined on marching to the metropolis. This part of the Memoir is
peculiarly interesting, from its giving the private impressions of
individuals of rank and importance, on the everyday movements of the
time.
On the 1st of August, Lady Hardwicke, who was, of course, acquainted
with all the opinions of government, writes to her son Philip Yorke, who
was then out of town:—“My heart is very heavy. Our folks are very busy
at this time, by fresh alarms of the Pretender being in Scotland. But I
believe the ship Captain Bret fought was the ship he was in. If it be
so, he is not yet got there; which may give a little more time to
prepare for him. The French disclaim sending him there; but that is
nothing. They are to take Ostend; while Spain sends troops thence, to
the other end of the kingdom, to distract our measures. This is my
opinion, God grant I may be in the wrong. In the mean time, our king’s
abroad, and our troops also. There comes out a proclamation this day,
offering a reward for the Pretender, as I am informed.”
Lord Hardwicke had been appointed one of the Regency, on the King’s
absence in Germany. And his views of the crisis were gloomy enough. In a
letter to Lord Glenorchy (August 15) he says, “On Tuesday last we
received advice from the Duke of Argyle and my Lord Justice Clerk, that
the young Pretender was landed in the north-west parts of the Highlands.
He is said to have come in a single ship of 16 or 18 guns, attended by
about 70 persons, among whom are Lord Tullibardine and old Lochiel. When
I look round me, and consider our whole situation, _our all appears to
be at stake_.”
“The yachts sailed this morning for the King, who has declared he will
set out from Hanover, as soon as he has heard they have arrived on the
other side.”
This was desponding language from so eminent a person, but it was
produced by deeper feelings than alarm at the landing of a few people in
the north, though with a prince at their head. The plain truth, and no
man was better aware of it than Hardwicke, was, that the conduct of the
late Cabinet had utterly disgusted the nation. The contempt justly felt
for Walpole had spread to higher objects; and the nation looked with an
ominous quietude on the coming struggle between the young Chevalier and
the possessor of the throne. As if the factions of parliament had been
preparing for the success of the Stuarts, all their efforts for the last
ten years had been directed to dismantle the country; all their
harangues were turned to extinguishing the army, which they described as
at once ruinous to the finances, and dangerous to the liberties of the
country. Probably there was not a man of all those declaimers who
believed a single syllable which he uttered; but “Reduction” was the
party cry. With France in immense military power; with the Stuarts
living under its protection; with the whole force of Popery intriguing
throughout the country; and with a great number of weak people, who
thought that their consciences called for the return of the exiled
dynasty in the person of the Pretender, the reduction of the national
defences by the ministry fell little short of treason. But when the
intelligence of the prince’s arrival was brought to London, the kingdom
seems to have been left almost without a soldier; every battalion being
engaged in the lingering war in Germany. The King had not added to the
strength of his government; his passion for going to Hanover had
occasioned obvious public inconvenience, and his absence at the moment
of public peril was felt with peculiar irritability. The Chancellor, on
this subject, after alluding to his recovery from a slight illness,
says, “Would to God, the state of our affairs were as much mended; but
the clouds continue as black as ever; and how soon the storm may burst
on us, we know not.”
On the first news of the Chevalier’s landing, a message had been sent to
the King, to return with all haste, which he did, as is mentioned in a
letter of the Chancellor to the Archbishop of York. After speaking of
the difficulties of government, the letter closes with, “I had writ thus
far, when a messenger from Margate brought the good news that the King
landed there about half an hour after three this morning, and would be
at Kensington within two hours. Accordingly, his Majesty arrived there
about two o’clock, in perfect health. I really think I never saw him
look better in my life. He appears also to be in very good humour, and
to value himself upon the haste he has made to us, when there was any
apprehension of danger affecting this country.”
In another letter, he sadly laments the absence of all public interest
in the event of the Rebellion. “Can you tell what will make _double
hearts_ true?... I have not slept these two nights; _but sweat and
prayed_.... The Duke of Argyle is come to town, and done nothing; and
Duke Athol is gone to a town in the Highlands, and does nothing neither.
He has had Glengarrie with him, whose clan has joined the Pretender, and
he is gone from him. In short, every thing is in a strange way, and
nobody, hardly, is affected as they ought; at least as I am.... This is
the real state of things, however they may be disguised, and I fear Sir
J. Cope’s _not equal to his business_. God alone can save us, to whose
merciful judgment we trust.”
The late Sydney Smith’s pleasantries on the novelty of invasion ideas in
the brains of John Bull, and the difficulty of convincing him of the
possibilities of such a thing, were fully exemplified in the cabinet, as
well as in the people. The cabinet did little more than send for the
King, and the King did little more than send an incompetent officer with
a small detachment of troops to put down a rebellion which might have
already enlisted the whole martial population of Scotland; even the
Chancellor could not restrain himself from running down to one or other
of his country houses, for two or three days at a time, while the
government was actually trembling from hour to hour on the verge of the
scaffold. This childish inability of self-control disparages the conduct
of so distinguished a person. But with all his “sweating and praying,”
he seems to have been totally incapable of denying himself this pitiful
indulgence, when a week might see the Stuarts on the throne. At length
troops were ordered from Germany, and six thousand arrived with General
Ligonier. Some Dutch regiments followed; five men-of-war returned from
the Mediterranean, and the British regiments were on their march through
Holland. In the mean time came the startling announcement that the
Pretender was in Edinburgh, that he was proclaimed there, and that he
was royally lodged in Holyrood House. The Chancellor’s fears of Cope’s
inefficiency were soon shown to have been prophetic. Cope had been sent
to save Edinburgh,—the clans outmarched him, and Cope had no resource
but to land at Dunbar. At Haddington he suddenly found the clans to the
south of his force. They were about three thousand, half armed, to his
two thousand two hundred disciplined troops; the Highlanders rushed upon
him and routed him in a moment. The Chevalier returned to Edinburgh with
a hundred pipers leading the march, and playing, “The king shall have
his own again.”
The person who figures mainly at this period, and who appears to have
shown alike good sense and courage, was Herring, Archbishop of York, an
old friend of the Chancellor, who had recommended him to the government
when but preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, obtained for him a bishopric, and
pushed him forward into the Archbishopric of York. Herring was
afterwards promoted to Canterbury, perhaps as a reward of his loyalty
and manliness in this delicate and difficult time. Herring was evidently
a sensible and high-minded man, and his letters to the Chancellor figure
conspicuously among the mass of correspondence received by Hardwicke. On
the battle of Prestonpans, this vigorous prelate thus wrote:—
“I conceal it, but I own I conceive terrible apprehensions from the
affair at Prestonpans, where the conduct of our general, &c., was —— I
won’t give it the right name, but that of the rebels excellent; and,
from what I can collect, and the judgment which I form upon the opinion
of the soldiers here, they are admirably disciplined, and, our soldiers
have felt, well armed. They showed resolution and conduct in taking the
little battery, and as they are vigorous and savage, their leaders well
know how to point their strength properly and effectually. There is
something, too, in their artful taciturnity that alarms one. They say it
is a fact that from their setting out to this hour it is not easy to say
who leads them, nor are they seen in a manner till they are felt, so
silent and well conceived are their motions. I hope all this is known
above much better than it is here, and that it is now seen that this
rebellion is not to be quashed by small pelotons of an army, but must be
attended to _totis viribus_. Who can say what will be the consequence of
such an advantage gained in England?” In another letter Herring mentions
that a meeting of the county was held at York, at which he presided.
London was of course full of rumours, and a letter from Lady Hardwicke
gives them in grave yet ridiculous detail. After saying that the
merchants had stopped the run upon the bank, she mentions a report that
the Chancellor was turned out; that the Duke of Newcastle and his
brother had run away, some said, to the Pretender; and others, that
Lestock, the Admiral, had produced three letters from him forbidding him
to fight; and these reports gained a universal run. People were told at
the turnpikes as they passed through, that London was in an uproar and
his Grace fled. Nay, the mobs gathered in crowds about his house, and
saw some of the shutters unopened, whence they concluded he was gone;
and when he went out they surrounded his chariot, and looked him in the
face and said, “It is he! he is not gone. What is our condition, when
such monstrous lies are spread to increase the terrors of honest minds?”
The Archbishop’s exertions gave great satisfaction to the King, whom he
had so worthily and courageously served; and the Chancellor immediately
wrote him an account of an interview which he had with his Majesty on
the occasion. “I own,” said he, “I feel a particular pleasure in the
great and noble part which your Grace has taken on this occasion, and in
the gallant, wise, and becoming manner in which you have exerted
yourself. I was so full of it, that I went immediately to Kensington,
and gave the King an ample account of it in his closet. I found him
apprised of it in the Lord Lieutenant’s letters, which he had received
from the Duke of Newcastle; but he was so pleased with it that he was
desirous of hearing it over again. I informed his Majesty of the
substance of your letter, the sermon your Grace had preached last
Sunday, and with such prodigious expedition printed and dispersed; and
when I came to your speech, he desired me to show it him. His Majesty
read it over from beginning to end, gave it the just praise it so highly
deserves, and said it must be printed. I told him I believed it was
printing at York, but it is determined to print it in the Gazette. When
I had gone through this part, I said, your Majesty will give me leave to
acquaint my Lord Archbishop that you approve his zeal and activity in
your service—to which the King answered quick, My lord, that is not
enough; you must also tell the Archbishop that I heartily thank him for
it. His Majesty also highly applauded the affection, zeal, and unanimity
which had appeared in the several lords and gentlemen on this occasion.”
The Chancellor also informs him that ten British regiments had arrived
from Flanders, and that eight battalions more, and 1500 dragoons were
ordered to embark. He then makes a natural and just remark on the
faction that had clamoured against putting the country into a state of
defence. “I know some friends of yours who had talked themselves hoarse
in contending for this measure, and whose advice, if followed some time
ago, might have prevented, in all human probability, this dismal scene.
But the conduct of _some persons_ on this occasion has been infamous.”
He then marks the true conduct to be adopted in all instances of civil
war. “A great body of forces will forthwith be sent to the North. I
contend every where, that they must be a _great body_, for the
protection of the King’s crown and his people. The work of the
Revolution, which has been building up these seven-and-fifty years, must
not be risked upon an even chance.” Such is true policy. The defence of
an empire must not be risked upon a chance; the benighted and dishonest
theorists, who would enfeeble the defences of England in our day, for
the sake of gaining the clamour of a mob, would be the first to fly in
the hour of danger; and although the _certainty_ of a French war from
the ambition of the monarchy, is at an end, and the Prince de Joinville
is not likely to realise the suggestions of his detestable pamphlet, and
have the honour of pouncing on our sea-coast villages; a Republic is a
neighbour to which we have not been accustomed for a long while, and
which, with the best intentions for the present, may very suddenly
change its mind.
Another letter from Herring shows the gallant spirit which may exist
under lawn sleeves. “I purposed,” said he, “to have set out for London
on Wednesday; but I have had a sort of remembrance from the city here
(York) that it will create some uneasiness. There is a great matter in
opinion; and if my attendance at Bishopsthorpe serves to support a
spirit, or to preserve a union, or that the people think so, I will not
stir.... I have therefore put off my journey, but ordered my affairs so,
that at the least intimation from your Lordship, I can _vasa
conclamare_, and set out in an hour. To talk in the style military,
(though my red coat is not made yet,) the first _column_ of my family
went off a week ago, the second moves on Wednesday, and the third
attends my motions. I purpose to leave my house in a condition to
receive the Marshal, if he pleases to make use of it. And there is a
sort of policy in my civility, too; for while he occupies it, it cannot
be plundered. I know your Lordship has ever an anxiety for your friends.
But, if I must fly, the General and his hussars have offered to cover my
retreat. But enough of this; I had rather laugh when the battle is won,
and could not help putting up an ejaculation at the pond-side
to-night,—Heaven grant I may feed my swans in peace!”
The mention of the red coat was probably suggested by a report that the
Archbishop had been seen in uniform. And the “hussars” were a troop of
young gentlemen, whom General Oglethorpe had embodied at York.
The prelate was somewhat of a humorist; and he thus writes on his
military reputation:—“I find I must go into regimentals, in my own
defence, in a double sense; for an engraver has already given me a
Saracen’s head, surrounded with a chevalier in chains, and all the
instruments of war, and the hydra of rebellion at my feet. And I see
another copperplate promised, where I am to be exhibited in the same
martial attitude, with all my clergy with me. By my troth, as I judge
from applications made to me every day, I believe I could raise a
regiment of my own order. And I had a serious offer the other day from a
Welch curate, from the bottom of Merionethshire, who is six feet and a
half high, that, hearing that I had put on scarlet, he was ready to
attend me at an hour’s warning, if the Bishop of Bangor did not call
upon him for the same service.”
The disregard of all preparation had left the whole English border
defenceless. Hull and Carlisle were the only towns which had any means
of resistance. York had walls, but they were in a state of decay, and
had not a single piece of artillery. Thus the invaders were enabled to
pursue any road which they pleased. But their entrance into England
should have taught them that their enterprise had become hopeless. The
country people every where fled before them—the roads were filled with
the carriages and waggons of the gentry hurrying to places of safety. No
gentleman of rank joined them. One army was on their rear, and the main
army, under the Duke of Cumberland, was between them and London.
In the metropolis, the spirit of the people, always slow, until the
danger is visible, now awoke. The lawyers, in a procession of two
hundred and fifty carriages, carried up an address to the King, assuring
him of their loyalty. The trained bands were summoned. Troops were sent
to the coast to watch the French, if they should attempt invasion;
alarm-posts and signals were appointed in case of tumults in London, and
the capital was at length in safety against a much superior force to
that of the Chevalier. But in December the gratifying news came, that on
the 5th the invaders had retired from Derby, and were rapidly returning
to the North.
The disorder and exhaustion of those gallant but unfortunate men, must
have left them an easy prey to the superior forces which were now on
their track, when the pursuit was suddenly stopped by an alarm of French
invasion. Twelve thousand men had suddenly been collected; the Duke of
Richelieu, with the Pretender’s second son, had come to Dunkirk;
transports were gathered along the coast; and the invasion would
probably have been attempted, but for a storm which drove many of their
ships ashore near Calais. The troops in London were but six thousand!
The 16th of April, at Culloden, closed this most unhappy struggle, and
gave an internal peace to England which has never been broken.
The remarks in the memoir on this daring enterprise seem to be
imperfect. The first is, that if England was to have been invaded at
all, the effort should have been made before the army could be brought
from Flanders. The second is, that the retreat from Derby should have
been exchanged for a march on London. But the former would have required
a totally different plan of operations. The Prince should have landed in
Kent, if his object was to take London by surprise. But, as his only
troops must be the clans, he must look for them in the North; and it
would have been impossible to march an army from the Highlands to the
metropolis in less than a fortnight. On the second point, the retreat
from Derby was obviously necessary. The clans were already
diminishing—every step must be fought for—they were but half armed—and
the King’s troops were increasing day by day.
In one remark we agree, that the Chevalier should never have attempted
more than the possession of Scotland. He should have remained in
Holyrood House. There he had a majority of the nation in his favour,—the
heads of the clans, and the old romantic recollections of his ancestral
kings, all tending to support his throne. A French force might have been
easily summoned to his assistance, and for a while he might have
maintained a separate sovereignty. It is, on the other hand, not
improbable that the Scottish nation might have looked on the sovereignty
of a son of James, the persecutor, with jealousy; Protestantism would
have dreaded a French alliance; and the expulsion of the Chevalier would
have been effected in Scotland on the model of the English expulsion of
James. Still, the experiment was feasible for the claimant of a crown;
and the success of the adventure might have continued long enough to
produce great evil to both countries.
We have found these volumes highly interesting, not merely from the
importance of their period, but from their containing events so
curiously parallel to those of our own time. Among the rest was the
appointment to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. A letter from Charles
Yorke thus says:—“The Archbishop of Canterbury died suddenly on
Saturday. The Bishop of London has declined the offer of succeeding. It
is now offered to the Bishop of Salisbury, who has not yet returned an
answer. If he refuses, which some say he will, the Archbishop of York
will be the man.”
The reasons for these refusals were probably the reluctance to change,
at the advanced age of these bishops,—Sherlock, of Salisbury, being
seventy, and Gibson probably about the same age. The fees for possession
are also immense, and we have heard them rated at little short of
£20,000.
The Lord Chancellor announced the offer to the Archbishop of York, who
returned the following remarkable answer:—“I am honoured with your
Lordship’s of the 13th inst., which I embrace with all my heart, as a
new instance of that friendship and affection for me which for so many
years have been the support, and credit, and comfort of my life.
“I have considered the thing, my best friend and my most honoured Lord,
with all deliberation and compass of thought that I am master of, and am
come to a very firm and most resolved determination not to quit the See
of York on any account or on any consideration.... I am really poor; I
am not ambitious of being rich, but have too much pride, with, I hope, a
small mixture of honesty, to bear being in debt. I am now out of it, and
in possession of a clear independency of that sort. I must not go back,
and begin the world again at fifty-five.
“The honour of Canterbury is a thing of glare and splendour, and the
hopes of it a _proper incentive to schoolboys_ to industry. But I have
considered all its inward parts, and examined all its duties, and if I
should quit my present station to take it, I will not answer for it that
in less than a twelvemonth I did not sink and die with regret and envy
at the man who should succeed me here, and quit the place in my
possession, as I ought to do, to one better and wiser than myself.”
This language might have been received with some suspicion in other
instances; but Herring was a straightforward as well as a very able man,
and there can be no doubt that he spoke what he thought. But he seems to
have mistaken the position of the Primate as one of splendour, for we
certainly have seen instances in which it displayed any thing but
splendour, and in which the great body of the clergy knew no more of the
halls of Lambeth, shared no more of its due hospitality, and enjoyed no
more of the natural and becoming intercourse with their metropolitan,
than if he had been a hermit. This grievous error, which has the
necessary effect of repelling and ultimately offending and alienating
the whole body of the inferior clergy, a body who constitute the active
strength of the Establishment, we must hope to see henceforth totally
changed. In the higher view of the case, an Archbishop of Canterbury
possesses every advantage for giving an honourable and meritorious
popularity to the Church. By his rank, entitled to associate with the
highest personages of the empire, he may more powerfully influence them
by the manliness and intelligence of his opinions: a peer of parliament,
he should be a leader of council, the spokesman of the prelacy, the
guide of the peers on all ecclesiastical questions, and the courageous
protector of the Establishment committed to his charge. In his more
private course, he ought to cultivate the association of the learned,
the vigorous, and the active minds of the country. He ought especially
to be kind to his clergy, not merely by opening his palace and his
hospitalities to them all, but by personal intercourse, by visiting
their churches, by preaching from time to time in their pulpits, by
making himself known to them in the general civilities of private
friendliness, and by the easy attentions which, more than all the
formalities of official condescension, sink into the hearts of men. It
is absurd and untrue to say that an archbishop has no time for all these
things. These things are of the simplest facility to any man whose heart
is in the right place; and if, instead of locking himself up with two or
three dreary effigies of man, in the shape of chaplains, and freezing
all the soul within him by a rigid and repulsive routine, he shall “do
as he would be done unto” if he had remained a country curate, an
Archbishop of Canterbury might be the most beloved, popular, and for all
the best purposes, the most influential man in the kingdom.
Old age was now coming on Lord Hardwicke, and with it the painful
accompaniment of the loss of his old and intimate associates through
public and private life; his own public career, too, was come to its
close. In 1756 the Newcastle ministry was succeeded by that of the
celebrated William Pitt, (Lord Chatham,) and Lord Hardwicke resigned the
Great Seal. The note in his private journal states, “19th November 1756,
resigned the Great Seal voluntarily into his Majesty’s hands at St
James’s, after I had held it nineteen years, eight months, and ten
days.”
All authorities since his day appear to have agreed in giving the
highest tribute to this distinguished man. His character in the _Annual
Register_ says, “In judicature, his firmness and dignity were evidently
derived from his consummate knowledge and talents; and the mildness and
humanity which tempered it from the best heart.... His extraordinary
despatch of the business of the court, increased as it was in his time
beyond what had been known in any former, on account of his established
reputation there, and the extension of the commerce and riches of the
nation, was an advantage to the suitor, inferior only to that arising
from the acknowledged equity, perspicuity, and precision of his
decrees.... The manner in which he presided in the House of Lords added
order and dignity to that assembly.” Lord Campbell, in his late “Lives
of the Chancellors,” characterises Lord Hardwicke as “the man
universally and deservedly considered the most consummate judge who
_ever sat_ in the Court of Chancery.”
An instance of his grace of manner even in rebuke, amply deserves to be
recorded. A cause was argued in Chancery, in which a grandson of Oliver
Cromwell, and bearing the same name, was a party. The opposing counsel
began to cast some reflections on the memory of his eminent ancestor; on
which the Chancellor quietly said, “I observe Mr Cromwell standing
outside the bar, inconveniently pressed by the crowd; make way for him,
that he may _sit by me on the Bench_.” This had the effect of silencing
the sarcasms of the advocate. Lord Hardwicke seems to have excited a
professional deference for his legal conduct and abilities, which at
this distance of time it is difficult even to imagine. But the highest
names of the Bar seem to have exhausted language in his panegyric. Lord
Mansfield thus spoke of him on being requested by a lawyer to give him
materials for his biography. The answer is worth retaining for every
reason.
“My success in life is not very remarkable. My father was a man of rank
and fashion. Early in life I was introduced into the best company, and
my circumstances enabled me to support the character of a man of
fortune. To these advantages I chiefly owe _my_ success. And therefore
my life cannot be very interesting. But if you wish to employ your
abilities in writing the life of a truly _great_ and _wonderful_ man in
our profession, take the life of Lord Hardwicke for your object. He was
indeed a wonderful character. He became Chief Justice of England and
Chancellor from his own abilities and virtues; for he was the son of a
peasant!”
Not exactly so, as we have seen; for his father was a respectable man,
who gave him a legal education. But the great Chancellor certainly owed
but little to birth or fortune.
We have heard much of the elegance and polish of Mansfield’s style, but,
from the imperfect reports of public speeches a hundred years ago, have
had but few evidences of its charm. One precious relic, however, these
volumes have preserved. On his taking leave of the society of Lincolns
Inn, (on his being raised to the Bench,) the usual complimentary address
was made by Mr Charles Yorke. The reply, of which we give but a
sentence, was as follows:—
“If I have had in any measure success in my profession, it is owing to
the great man who has presided in our highest courts of judicature the
whole time I attended the bar. It was impossible to attend him, to sit
under him every day, without catching some beams from his light. The
disciples of Socrates, whom I will take the liberty to call the great
lawyer of antiquity, since the first principles of all law are derived
from his philosophy, owe their reputation to their having been the
repeaters of the sayings of their great master. If _we_ can arrogate
nothing to ourselves, we can boast of the school we were brought up in.
The scholar may glory in his master, and we may challenge past ages to
show us his equal.”
After brief allusions to the three great names of Bacon, Clarendon, and
Somers, all of whom he regarded as inferior either in moral or natural
distinctions, he said,—“It is the peculiar felicity of the great man of
whom I am speaking, to have presided for nearly twenty years, and to
have shone with a splendour that has risen superior to faction, and that
has subdued envy.”
The melancholy case of Admiral Byng occurred in this year, (1757) and is
well reasoned in this work. The writer thinks that the execution was
just. A death by law is naturally distressing to the feelings of
humanity, and the degradation or banishment of the unfortunate admiral
might possibly have had all the effects of the final punishment, without
giving so much pain to the public feelings. Still, the cabinet might
justly complain of the clamour raised against their act, by the party
who arraigned them for the death of Byng. In command of a great fleet on
a most important occasion, he had totally failed, and failed in despite
of the opinions of his own officers. He had been sent for the express
purpose of relieving the British garrison of Minorca, and he was scared
away by the chance of encountering the French fleet: the consequence
was, the surrender of the island, and the capture of the garrison. On
his return to England, he was tried and found guilty by a court-martial:
he was found guilty by the general opinion of the legislature and the
nation; and though the court-martial recommended him to mercy, on the
ground that his offence was not poltroonery, but an “error in judgment;”
yet his reluctance to fight the French had produced such ruinous
consequences, and had involved the navy in such European disgrace, that
the King determined on his death, and he died accordingly. An error in
judgment which consists in _not_ fighting, naturally seems, to a brave
people, a wholly different offence from the error which consists in
grappling with the enemy. And, though Voltaire’s sarcasm, that Byng was
shot _pour encourager les autres_, had all the pungency of the
Frenchman’s wit, and though British admirals could require no stimulant
to their courage from the fear of a similar fate, there can be but
little doubt that this execution helped to make up the decisions of many
a perplexed mind in after times. The man who fights needs have no fear
of court-martials in England. This was a most important point gained.
The greatest of living soldiers has said, that the only fault which he
had to find with any of his generals, was their dread of responsibility.
The court-martial of Byng taught the British captains, in the phrase of
the immortal Nelson, that “the officer who grapples with his enemy, can
never be wrong.”
On the 25th of October King George II. died. He had been in good health
previously, had risen from bed, taken his chocolate, and talked of
walking in the gardens of Kensington. The page had left the room, and
hearing a noise of something falling, hurried back. He found the King on
the floor, who only said, “Call Amelia,” and expired. He was
seventy-seven years old, and had reigned thirty-four years.
The King left but few recollections, and those negative. He had not
connected himself with the feelings of the country; he had not
patronised the fine arts, nor protected literature. He was wholly
devoted to continental politics, and had adhered to some continental
habits, which increased his unpopularity with the graver portion of the
people of England.
In 1763 Lord Hardwicke’s health began visibly to give way. He had lost
his wife, and had lost his old friend the Duke of Newcastle. Death was
every where among the circle of those distinguished persons who had been
the companions of his active days. He had great comfort, however, in
that highest of comforts to old age, the distinctions and talents of his
sons, who had all risen into public rank. But the common fate of all
mankind had now come upon him; and on the 6th of March he breathed his
last. “Serene and composed, I saw him in his last moments, and he looked
like an innocent child in its nurse’s arms,” is the note of his son. He
was seventy-four. His remains were interred in the parish church of
Wimpole.
The peerage and estates still continue in the family, and are now
represented by the estimable and intelligent son of the late Admiral Sir
Joseph Yorke. On the death of the Chancellor’s eldest son, who had
succeeded to the title, the eldest son of Mr Charles Yorke became Lord
Hardwicke. This nobleman, who was remarkable for scholarship and
refinement of taste, had held the anxious office of Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland in the year of the Rebellion 1798. His son, Lord Royston, a very
accomplished person, being lost by shipwreck in the seas, the son of the
well-known admiral, who had been so unhappily killed by a flash of
lightning in a boat off Portsmouth, became the heir.
It is in the history of men like Lord Hardwicke that England justly
prides herself. Here is an instance of the prizes which lie before the
vigour, talents, and principles of her great men. The son of a country
solicitor rises to the highest rank of a subject, forces his way through
all the obstacles of narrow means, professional prejudice, learned
difficulty, and humble birth; takes his place among the first ranks of
the aristocracy, guides the law, shares in the first influence of the
state, is the pillar of government, and chief councillor of his king;
accumulates a vast fortune, becomes master of magnificent estates, and
founds a family holding in succession distinguished offices in church
and state, and still forming a portion of the nobility of England. And
all this was done by the talents of a single individual. Long may the
constitution live which offers such triumphs to integrity and learning,
and glory be to the country which has such men, and fixes her especial
renown on their fame!
The biography is vigorous, intelligent, and remarkably interesting. No
historian can in future write the “Reign of George II.” without it. It
passes through times of singular importance: and while the volumes are
essential to the student of legal history, they offer a high
gratification to the general reader.
HOW WE GOT POSSESSION OF THE TUILLERIES.
CHAPTER I.
HEADS OR TAILS?
I like political ovations. It is a very pleasant thing to perambulate
Europe in the guise of a regenerator, sowing the good seed of political
economy in places which have hitherto been barren, and enlightening the
heathen upon the texture of calico, and the blessings of unreciprocal
free-trade. I rather flatter myself that I have excited considerable
sensation in certain quarters of Europe, previously plunged in darkness,
and unillumined by the argand lamp of Manchester philosophy. Since
September last, I have not been idle, but have borne the banner of
regeneration from the Baltic to the shores of the Bosphorus.
As the apostle of peace and plenty, I have every where been rapturously
greeted. Never, I believe, was there a sincerer, a more earnest wish
prevalent throughout the nations for the maintenance of universal
tranquillity than now; never a better security for that fraternisation
which we all so earnestly desire; never a more peaceful or
unrevolutionary epoch. Such, at least, were my ideas a short time ago,
when, after having fulfilled a secret mission of some delicacy in a very
distant part of the Continent, I turned my face homewards, and retraced
my steps in the direction of my own Glaswegian Mecca. In passing through
Italy, I found that country deeply engaged in plans of social
organisation, and much cheered by the sympathising presence of a member
of her Britannic Majesty’s cabinet. It was delightful to witness the
good feeling which seemed to prevail between the British unaccredited
minister and the scum of the Ausonian population,—the mutual politeness
and sympathy exhibited by each of the high contracting parties,—and the
perfect understanding on the part of the Lazzaroni, of the motives which
had induced the northern peer to absent himself from felicity awhile,
and devote the whole of his vast talents and genius to the cause of
foreign insurrection. I had just time to congratulate Pope Pius upon the
charming prospect which was before him, and to say a few hurried words
regarding the superiority of cotton to Christianity as a universal
tranquillising medium, when certain unpleasant rumours from the frontier
forced their way to the Eternal City, and convinced me of the propriety
of continuing my retreat towards the land of my nativity. Not that I
fear steel, or have any abstract repugnance to grape, but my mission was
emphatically one of peace; I had a great duty to discharge to my
country, and that might have been lamentably curtailed by the bullet of
some blundering Austrian.
Behold me, then, at Paris—that Aspasian capital of the world. I had
often visited it before in the character of a tourist and literateur,
but never until now as a politician. True, I was not accredited: I
enjoyed neither diplomatic rank, nor the more soothing salary which is
its accompaniment. But, in these times, such distinctions are rapidly
fading away. I had seen with my own eyes a good deal of spontaneous
diplomacy, which certainly did not seem to flow in the regular channel;
and, furthermore, I could personally testify to the weight attached
abroad to private commercial crusades. I needed no official costume; I
was the representative of a popular movement; I was the champion of a
class; and my name and my principles were alike familiar to the ears of
the illuminati of Europe. Formerly I had been proud of associating with
Eugène Sue, Charles Nodier, Paul de Kock, and other characters of
ephemeral literary celebrity; I had wasted my time in orgies at the Café
de Londres, or the Rocher de Cancale, and was but too happy to be
admitted to those little parties of pleasure in which the majority of
the cavaliers are feuilletonists, and the dames, terrestrial stars from
the constellation of the Théatre des Variétés. Now I looked back on this
former phase of my existence with a consciousness of having wasted my
energies. I had shot into another sphere—was entitled to take rank with
Thiers, Odillon Barrot, Crémieux, and other champions of the people; and
I resolved to comport myself accordingly. I do not feel at liberty to
enter into the exact details of the public business which detained me
for some time in Paris. It is enough to say, that I was warmly and
cordially received, and on the best possible terms with the members of
the _extreme gauche_.
One afternoon about the middle of February, I was returning from the
Chamber of Deputies, meditating very seriously upon the nature of a
debate which I had just heard, regarding the opposition of ministers to
the holding of a Reform banquet in Paris, and in which my friend Barrot
had borne a very conspicuous share. At the corner of the Place de la
Concorde, I observed a tall swarthy man in the uniform of the National
Guard, engaged in cheapening a poodle. I thought I recognised the
face—hesitated, stopped, and in a moment was in the arms of my
illustrious friend, the Count of Monte-Christo, and Marquis Davy de la
Pailleterie!
“_Capdibious!_” cried the author of Trois Mousquetaires—“Who would have
thought to see you here? Welcome, my dear Dunshunner, a thousand times
to Paris. Where have you been these hundred years?”
“Voyaging, like yourself, to the East, my dear Marquis,” replied I.
“Ah, bah! That is an old joke. I never was nearer Egypt than the Bois de
Boulogne; however, I did manage to mystify the good public about the
baths of Alexandria. But how came you here just now? _Dix mille
tonnerres!_ They told me you had been made _pair d’Angleterre_.”
“Why, no; not exactly. There was some talk of it, I believe. But
jealousy—jealousy, you know—”
“Ah, yes,—I comprehend! _Ce vilain Palmerston, n’est-ce pas?_ But that
is always the way; ministers are always the same. You will hardly credit
it, my dear friend, but I—I with my ancient title—and the most popular
author of France, am not even a member of the Chamber of Deputies!”
“You amaze me!”
“Yes—after all, you manage better in England. There is that little
D’Israeli—very clever man—Monceton Milles, Bourring, _bien mauvais
poètes_, and Wakeley, all in the legislature; while here the literary
interest is altogether unrepresented.”
“Surely, my dear Marquis, you forget—there’s Lamartine.”
“Lamartine! a mere sentimentalist—a nobody! No, my dear friend; France
must be regenerated. The daughter of glory, she cannot live without
progression.”
“How, Marquis? I thought that you and Montpensier”—
“Were friends! True enough. It was I who settled the Spanish marriages.
There, I rather flatter myself, I had your perfidious Albion on the hip.
But, to say the truth, I am tired of family alliances. We want something
more to keep us alive—something startling, in short—something like the
Pyramids and Moscow, to give us an impulse forward into the dark gulf of
futurity. The limits of Algeria are too contracted for the fluttering of
our national banner. We want freedom, less taxation, and a more extended
frontier.”
“And cannot all these,” said I, unwilling to lose the opportunity of
converting so remarkable man as the Count of Monte-Christo to the grand
principles of Manchester—“Cannot these be attained by more peaceful
methods than the subversion of general tranquillity? What is freedom, my
dear Marquis, but an unlimited exportation of cotton abroad, with double
task hours of wholesome labour at home? How will you diminish your
taxation better, than by reducing all duties on imports, until the
deficit is laid directly upon the shoulders of a single uncomplaining
class? Why seek to extend your frontier, whilst we in England, out of
sheer love to the world at large, are rapidly demolishing our colonies?
Did you ever happen,” continued I, pulling from my pocket a bundle of
the Manchester manifestos, “to peruse any of these glorious epitomes of
reason and of political science? Are you familiar with the soul-stirring
tracts of Thompson and of Bright? Did you ever read the Socialist’s
scheme for universal philanthropy, which Cobden”—
“_Peste!_” replied the illustrious nobleman, “what the deuce do we care
for the opinions of Monsieur Tonson, or any of your low manufacturers?
By my honour, Dunshunner, I am afraid you are losing your head. Don’t
you know, my dear fellow, that all great revolutions spring from us, the
men of genius? It is we who are the true rousers of the people; we, the
poets and romancers, who are the source of all legitimate power. Witness
Voltaire, Rousseau, De Beranger, and—I may say it without any imputation
of vanity—the Marquis Davy de la Pailleterie!”
“Yours is a new theory!” said I, musingly.
“New! Pray pardon me—it is as old as literature itself! No revolution
can be effectual unless it has the fine arts for its basis. Simple as I
stand here, I demand no more time than a month to wrap Europe in
universal war.”
“You don’t say so seriously?”
“On my honour.”
“Give me leave to doubt it.”
“Should you like a proof?”
“Not on so great a scale, certainly. I am afraid the results would be
too serious to justify the experiment.”
“Ah, bah! You are a philanthropist. What are a few thousand lives
compared with the triumph of mind?”
“Not much to you, perhaps, but certainly something to the owners. But
come, my dear friend, you are jesting. You don’t mean to insinuate that
you possess any such power?”
“I do indeed.”
“But the means? Granting that you have the power—and all Europe
acknowledges the extraordinary faculties of the author of
Monte-Christo—some time would be required for their development. You
cannot hope to inoculate the mind of a nation in a moment.”
“I did not say a moment—I said a month.
“And dare I ask your recipe?”
“A very simple one. Two romances, each in ten volumes, and a couple of
melodramas.”
“What! of your own?”
“Of mine,” replied the Marquis de la Pailleterie.
“I wish to heaven that I knew how you set about it. I have heard G. P.
R. James backed for a volume a month, but this sinks him into utter
insignificance.”
“There is no difficulty in explaining it. He writes,—I never do.
“You never write?”
“Never.”
“Then how the mischief do you manage?”
“I compose. Since I met you, I have composed and dictated a whole
chapter of the Memoirs of a Physician.”
“Dictated?”
“To be sure. It is already written down, and will be circulated
throughout Paris to-morrow.”
“Monsieur le Marquis—have I the honour to hold an interview with Satan?”
“_Mon cher, vous me flattez beaucoup!_ I have not thought it necessary
to intrust my experiences to the sympathising bosom of M. Frédéric
Soulié.”
“Have you a familiar spirit, then?” said I, casting a suspicious glance
towards the poodle, then vigorously engaged in hunting through its
woolly fleece.
The Marquis smiled.
“The ingenuity of your supposition, my dear friend, deserves a specific
answer. I have indeed a familiar spirit—that is, I am possessed of a
confidant, ready at all times, though absent, to chronicle my thoughts,
and to express, in corresponding words, the spontaneous emotions of my
soul. Nay, you need not start. The art is an innocent one, and its
practice, though divulged, would not expose me in any way to the
censures of the church.”
“You pique my curiosity strangely!”
“Well, then, listen. For some years I have paid the utmost attention to
the science of animal magnetism, an art which undoubtedly lay at the
foundation of the ancient Chaldean lore, and which, though now revived,
has been debased by the artifices and quackery of knaves. I need not go
into details. After long search, I have succeeded in finding a being
which, in its dormant or spiritual state, has an entire affinity with my
own. When awake, you would suppose Leontine Deschappelles to be a mere
ordinary though rather interesting female, endowed certainly with a
miraculous sensibility for music, but not otherwise in any way
remarkable. But, when asleep, she becomes as it were the counterpart or
reflex of myself. Every thought which passes through my bosom
simultaneously arises in hers. I do not need even to utter the words. By
some miraculous process, these present themselves as vividly to her as
if I had bestowed the utmost labour upon composition. I have but to
throw her into a magnetic sleep, and my literary product for the day is
secured. I go forth through Paris, mingle in society, appear idle and
_insouciant_; and yet all the while the ideal personages of my tale are
passing over the mirror of my mind, and performing their allotted duty.
I have reached such perfection in the art, that I can compose two or
even three romances at once. I return towards evening, and then I find
Leontine, pale indeed and exhausted, but with a vast pile of manuscript
before her, which contains the faithful transcript of my thoughts. Now,
perhaps, you will cease to wonder at an apparent fertility, which, I am
aware, has challenged the admiration and astonishment of Europe.”
All this was uttered by Monte-Christo with such exemplary gravity, that
I stood perfectly confounded. If true, it was indeed the solution of the
greatest literary problem of the age; but I could hardly suppress the
idea that he was making me the victim of a hoax.
“And whereabouts does she dwell, this Demoiselle Leontine?” said I.
“At my house,” he replied: “she is my adopted child. Poor Leontine!
sometimes when I look at her wasted cheek, I feel a pang of regret to
think that she is paying so dear for a celebrity which must be immortal.
But it is the fate of genius, my friend, and all of us must submit!”
As the Marquis uttered this sentiment with a pathetic sigh, I could not
refrain from glancing at his manly and athletic proportions. Certainly
there was no appearance of over-fatigue or lassitude there. He looked
the very incarnation of good cheer, and had contrived to avert from his
own person all vestige of those calamities which he was pleased so
feelingly to deplore. He might have been exhibited at the _Frères
Provençaux_ as a splendid result of their nutritive and culinary system.
“You doubt me still, I see,” said De la Pailleterie. “Well, I cannot
wonder at it. Such things, I know, sound strange in the apprehension of
you incredulous islanders. But I will even give you a proof, Dunshunner,
which is more than I would do to any other man—for I cannot forget the
service you rendered me long ago at the Isle de Bourbon. You see this
little instrument,—put it to your ear. I shall summon Leontine to speak,
and the sound of her reply will be conveyed to you through that silver
tube, which is in strict _rapport_ with her magnetic constitution.”
So saying, he placed in my hand a miniature silver trumpet, beautifully
wrought, which I immediately placed to my ear.
Monte-Christo drew himself up to his full height, fixed his fine eyes
earnestly upon vacuity, made several passes upwards with his hand, and
then said,
“My friend, do you hear me? If so, answer.”
Immediately, and to my unexpected surprise, there thrilled through the
silver tube a whisper of miraculous sweetness.
“Great master! I listen—I obey!”
“May St Mungo, St Mirren, St Rollox, and all the other western saints,
have me in their keeping!” cried I. “Heard ever mortal man aught like
this?”
“Hush—be silent!” said the Marquis, “or you may destroy the spell.
Leontine, have you concluded the chapter?”
“I have,” said the voice: “shall I read the last sentences?”
“Do,” replied the adept, who seemed to hear the response simultaneously
with myself, by intuition.
The voice went on. “At this moment the door of the apartment opened, and
Chon rushed into the room. ‘Well, my little sister, how goes it?’ said
the Countess. ‘Bad.’ ‘Indeed!’ ‘It is but too true.’ ‘De Noailles?’
‘No.’ ‘Ha! D’Aiguillon?’ ‘You deceive yourself.’ ‘Who then?’ ‘Philip de
Taverney, the Chevalier Maison-Rouge!’ ‘Ha!’ cried the Countess, ‘then I
am lost!’ and she sank senseless upon the cushions.”
“Well done, Leontine!” exclaimed De la Pailleterie; “that is the seventh
chapter I have composed since morning. Are you fatigued, my child?”
“Very—very weary,” replied the voice, in a melancholy cadence.
“You shall have rest soon. Come hither. Do you see me?”
“Ah! you are very cruel!”
“I understand. Cease to be fatigued—I will it!”
“Ah! thanks, thanks!”
“Do you see me now?”
“I do. Oh, how handsome!”
The Marquis caressed his whiskers.
“Where am I?”
“At the corner of the Place de la Concorde, near the Tuilleries’
gardens. Ah, you naughty man, you have been smoking!”
“Who is with me?”
“A poodle-dog,” replied the voice. “What a pretty creature! he is just
snapping at a fly. Come here, poor fellow!”
The poodle gave an unearthly yell, and rushed between the legs of
Monte-Christo, thereby nearly capsizing that extraordinary magician.
“Who else?” asked the Marquis.
“A tall man, with sandy-coloured hair. La, how funny!”
“What now?”
“I am laughing.”
“At what?”
“At his dress.”
“How is he dressed?”
“In a blue coat with gilt buttons, a white hat, and such odd
scarlet-and-yellow trowsers!”
I stood petrified. It was quite true. In a moment of abstraction I had
that morning donned a pair of integuments of the M’Tavish tartan, and my
legs were of the colour of the flamingo.
“Is he handsome?”
I did not exactly catch the response.
“That will do, my dear Marquis,” said I, returning him the trumpet. “I
am now perfectly convinced of the truth of your assertions, and can no
longer wonder at the marvellous fertility of your pen—I beg pardon—of
your invention. Pray, do not trouble your fair friend any further upon
my account. I have heard quite enough to satisfy me that I am in the
presence of the most remarkable man in Europe.”
“Pooh! this is a mere bagatelle. Any man might do the same, with a
slight smattering of the occult sciences. But we were talking, if I
recollect right, about moral influence and power. I maintain that the
authors of romance and melodrama are the true masters of the age: you,
on the contrary, believe in free-trade and the jargon of political
economy. Is it not so?”
“True. We started from that point.”
“Well, then, would you like to see a revolution?”
“Not on my account, my dear Marquis. I own the interest of the
spectacle, but it demands too great a sacrifice.”
“Not at all. In fact, I have made up my mind for a _bouleversement_ this
spring, as I seriously believe it would tend very much to the
respectability of France. It must come sooner or later. Louis Philippe
is well up in years, and it cannot make much difference to him. Besides,
I am tired of Guizot. He gives himself airs as an historian which are
absolutely insufferable, and France can submit to it no longer. The only
doubt I entertain is, whether this ought to be a new ministry, or an
entire dynastical change.”
“You are the best judge. For my own part, having no interest in the
matter further than curiosity, a change of ministers would satisfy me.”
“Ay, but there are considerations beyond that. Much may be said upon
both sides. There is danger certainly in organic changes, at the same
time we must work out by all means our full and legitimate freedom. What
would you do in such a case of perplexity?”
Victor Hugo’s simple and romantic method of deciding between hostile
opinions, as exemplified in his valuable drama of Lucrèce Borgia, at
once occurred to me.
“Are you quite serious,” said I, “in wishing to effect a change of some
kind?”
“I am,” said the Marquis, “as resolute as Prometheus on the Caucasus.”
“Then, suppose we toss for it; and so leave the question of a new
cabinet or dynasty entirely to the arbitration of fate?”
“A good and a pious idea!” replied the Marquis de la Pailleterie. “Here
is a five-franc piece. I shall toss, and you shall call.”
Up went the dollar, big with the fate of France, twirling in the evening
air.
“Heads for a new ministry!” cried I, and the coin fell chinking on the
gravel. We both rushed up.
“It is tails!” said the Marquis devoutly. “Destiny! thou hast willed it,
and I am but thine instrument. Farewell, my friend; in ten days you
shall hear more of this. Meantime, I must be busy. Poor Leontine! thou
hast a heavy task before thee!”
“If you are going homewards,” said I, “permit me to accompany you so
far. Our way lies together.”
“Not so,” replied the Marquis thoughtfully. “I dine to-day at Véfour’s,
and in the evening I must attend the Théatre de la Porte St Martin. I am
never so much alone as in the midst of excitement. O France, France!
what do I not endure for thee!”
So saying, Monte-Christo extended his hand, which I wrung affectionately
within my own. I felt proud of the link which bound me to so high and
elevated a being.
“Ah, my friend!” said I, “ah, my friend! there is yet time to pause.
Would it not be wiser and better to forego this enterprise altogether?”
“You forget,” replied the other solemnly. “Destiny has willed it. Go,
let us each fulfil our destiny!”
So saying, this remarkable man tucked the poodle under his arm, and in a
few moments was lost to my view amidst the avenues of the garden of the
Tuilleries.