ELBA AND PARIS
If it be an advantage to pause in the midst of the rush of life and
take one's bearings afresh, then Napoleon was fortunate in being
drifted to the quiet eddy of Elba. He there had leisure to review his
career, to note where he had served his generation and succeeded,
where also he had dashed himself fruitlessly against the fundamental
instincts of mankind. Undoubtedly he did essay this mental
stock-taking. He remarked to the conscientious Drouot that he was
wrong in not making peace at the Congress of Prague; that trust in his
own genius and in his soldiery led him astray; "but those who blame me
have never drunk of Fortune's intoxicating cup." When a turn of her
wheel brought him uppermost again, he confessed that at Elba he had
heard, as in a tomb, the verdict of posterity; and there are signs
that his maturer convictions thenceforth strove to curb the old
domineering instincts that had wrecked his life.
Introspection, however, was alien to his being; he was made for the
camp rather than the study; his critical powers, if turned in for a
time on himself, quickly swung back to work upon men and affairs; and
they found the needed exercise in organizing his Liliputian Empire and
surveying the course of European politics. In the first weeks he was
up at dawn, walking or riding about Porto Ferrajo and its environs,
planning better defences, or tracing out new roads and avenues of
mulberry trees. "I have never seen a man," wrote Campbell, "with so
much activity and restless perseverance: he appears to take pleasure
in perpetual movement, and in seeing those who accompany him sink
under fatigue." About seven hundred of his Guards were brought over on
British transports; and these, along with Corsicans and Tuscans,
guarded him against royalist plotters, real or supposed. In a short
time he purchased a few small vessels, and annexed the islet of
Pianosa. These affairs and the formation of an Imperial Court for the
delectation of his mother and his sister Pauline, who now joined him,
served to drive away ennui; but he bitterly resented the Emperor
Francis's refusal to let his wife and son come to him. Whether Marie
Louise would have come is more than doubtful, for her relations to
Count Neipperg were already notorious; but the detention of his son
was a heartless action that aroused general sympathy for the lonely
man. The Countess Walewska paid him a visit for some days, bringing
the son whom she had borne him.[458]
Meanwhile Europe was settling down uneasily on its new political
foundations. Considering that France had been at the mercy of the
allies, she had few just grounds of complaint against them. The
Treaties of Paris (May 30th, 1814) left her with rather wider bounds
than those of 1791; and she kept the art treasures reft by Napoleon.
Perfidious Albion yielded up all her French colonial conquests, except
Mauritius, Tobago, and St. Lucia. Britons grumbled at the paltry gains
brought by a war that had cost more than £600,000,000: but Castlereagh
justified the policy of conciliation. "It is better," said he, "for
France to be commercial and pacific than a warlike and conquering
State." We insisted on her ceding Belgium to the House of Orange,
while we retained the Dutch colonies conquered by us, the Cape,
Demerara, and Curaçoa--paying £6,000,000 for them.
The loss of the Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Italy galled French
pride. Loud were the murmurs of the throngs of soldiers that came from
the fortresses of Germany, or the prisons of Spain, Russia, and
England--70,000 crossed over from our shores alone--at the harshness
of the allies and the pusillanimity of the Bourbons. The return from
war to peace is always hard; and now these gaunt warriors came back to
a little France that perforce discharged them or placed them on
half-pay. Perhaps they might have been won over by a tactful Court:
but the Bourbons, especially that typical _émigré_, the Comte
d'Artois, were nothing if not tactless, witness their shelving of the
Old Guard and formation of the Maison du Roi, a privileged and highly
paid corps of 6,000 nobles and royalist gentlemen. The peasants, too,
were uneasy, especially those who held the lands of nobles confiscated
in the Revolution. To indemnify the former owners was impossible in
face of the torrent of exorbitant claims that flowed in. And the year
1814, which began as a soul-stirring epic, ended with sordid squabbles
worthy of a third-rate farce.
Moreover, at this very time, the former allies seemed on the brink of
war. The limits of our space admit only of the briefest glance at the
disputes of the Powers at the Congress of Vienna. The storm centre of
Europe was the figure of the Czar. To our ambassador at Vienna, Sir
Charles Stewart, he declared his resolve to keep western Poland and
never to give up 7,000,000 of his "Polish subjects."[459] Strange to
say, he ultimately gained the assent of Prussia to this objectionable
scheme, provided that she acquired the whole of Saxony, while
Frederick Augustus was to be transplanted to the Rhineland with Bonn
as capital. To these proposals Austria, England, and France offered
stern opposition, and framed a secret compact (January 3rd, 1815) to
resist them, if need be, with armies amounting to 450,000 men. But,
though swords were rattled in their scabbards, they were not drawn.
When news reached Vienna of the activity of Bonapartists in France and
of Murat in Italy, the Powers agreed (February 8th) to the
Saxon-Polish compromise which took shape in the map of Eastern Europe.
The territorial arrangements in the west were evidently inspired by
the wish to build up bulwarks against France. Belgium was tacked on to
Holland; Germany was huddled into a Confederation, in which the
princes had complete sovereign powers; and the Kingdom of Sardinia
grew to more than its former bulk by recovering Savoy and Nice and
gaining Genoa.
This piling up of artificial barriers against some future Napoleon was
to serve the designs of the illustrious exile himself. The instinct of
nationality, which his blows had aroused to full vigour, was now
outraged by the sovereigns whom it carried along to victory. Belgians
strongly objected to Dutch rule, and German "Unitarians," as
Metternich dubbed them, spurned a form of union which subjected the
Fatherland to Austria and her henchmen. Hardest of all was the fate of
Italy. After learning the secret of her essential unity under
Napoleon, she was now parcelled out among her former rulers; and
thrills of rage shot through the peninsula when the Hapsburgs settled
down at Venice and Milan, while their scions took up the reins at
Modena, Parma, and Florence.
It was on this popular indignation that Murat now built his hopes.
After throwing over Napoleon, he had looked to find favour with the
allies; but his movements in 1814 had been so suspicious that the fate
of his kingdom remained hanging in the balance. The Bourbons of Paris
and Madrid strove hard to effect his overthrow; but Austria and
England, having tied their hands early in 1814 by treaties with him,
could only wait and watch in the hope that the impetuous soldier would
take a false step. He did so in February, 1815, when he levied forces,
summoned Louis XVIII. to declare whether he was at war with him, and
prepared to march into Northern Italy.
The disturbed state of the peninsula caused the Powers much uneasiness
as to the presence of Napoleon at Elba. Louis XVIII. in his
despatches, and Talleyrand in private conversations, two or three
times urged his removal to the Azores; but, with the exception of
Castlereagh, who gave a doubtful assent, the plenipotentiaries scouted
the thought of it. Metternich entirely opposed it, and the Czar would
certainly have objected to the reversal of his Elba plan, had
Talleyrand made a formal proposal to that effect. But he did not do
so. The official records of the Congress contain not a word on the
subject. Equally unfounded were the newspaper rumours that the
Congress was considering the advisability of removing Napoleon to St.
Helena. On this topic the official records are also silent; and we
have the explicit denial of the Duke of Wellington (who reached Vienna
on the 1st of February to relieve Castlereagh) that "the Congress ever
had any intention of removing Bonaparte from Elba to St. Helena."[460]
Napoleon's position was certainly one of unstable equilibrium, that
tended towards some daring enterprise or inglorious bankruptcy. The
maintenance of his troops cost him more than 1,000,000 francs a year,
while his revenue was less than half of that sum. He ought to have
received 2,000,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII.; but that monarch,
while confiscating the property of the Bonapartes in France, paid not
a centime of the sums which the allies had pledged him to pay to the
fallen House. Both the Czar and our envoy, Castlereagh, warmly
reproached Talleyrand with his master's shabby conduct; to which the
plenipotentiary replied that it was dangerous to furnish Napoleon with
money as long as Italy was in so disturbed a state. Castlereagh, on
his return to England by way of Paris, again pressed the matter on
Louis XVIII., who promised to take the matter in hand. But he was soon
quit of it: for, as he wrote to Talleyrand on March 7th, Bonaparte's
landing in France _spared him the trouble_.[461]
To assert, however, that Napoleon's escape from Elba was prompted by a
desire to avoid bankruptcy, is to credit him with respectable
_bourgeois_ scruples by which he was never troubled. Though "Madame
Mère" and Pauline complained bitterly to Campbell of the lack of funds
at Elba, the Emperor himself was far from depressed. "His spirits seem
of late," wrote Campbell on December 28th, "rather to rise, and not to
yield in the smallest degree to the pressure of pecuniary
difficulties." Both Campbell and Lord John Russell, who then paid the
Emperor a flying visit, thought that he was planning some great move,
and warned our Ministers.[462] But they shared the view of other
wiseacres, that Italy would be his goal, and that too, when Campbell's
despatches teemed with remarks made to him by Napoleon as to the
certainty of an outbreak in France. Here are two of them:
He said that there would be a violent outbreak, similar to the
Revolution, in consequence of their present humiliation: every man
in France considers the Rhine to be the natural frontier of
France, and nothing can alter this opinion. If the spirit of the
nation is roused into action nothing can oppose it. It is like a
torrent.... The present Government of France is too feeble: the
Bourbons should make war as soon as possible so as to establish
themselves upon the throne. It would not be difficult to recover
Belgium. It is only for the British troops there that the French
army has the smallest awe" (_sic_).
His final resolve to put everything to the hazard was formed about
February 13th, when, shortly after receiving tidings as to the unrest
in Italy, the discords of the Powers, and the resolve of the allied
sovereigns to leave Vienna on the 20th, he heard news of the highest
importance from France. On that day one of his former officials,
Fleury de Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and informed him of the hatching
of a plot by military malcontents, under the lead of Fouché, for the
overthrow of Louis XVIII.[463] Napoleon at once despatched his
informant to Naples, and ordered his brig, "L'Inconstant," to be
painted like an English vessel. Most fortunately for him, Campbell on
the 16th set sail for Tuscany--"for his health and on private
affairs"--on the small war-vessel, "Partridge," to which the British
Government had intrusted the supervision of Napoleon. Captain Adye, of
that vessel, promised, after taking Campbell to Leghorn, to return and
cruise off Elba. He called at Porto Ferrajo on the 24th, and to
Bertrand's question, when he was to bring Campbell back, returned the
undiplomatic answer that it was fixed for the 26th. The news seems to
have decided Napoleon to escape on that day, when the "Partridge"
would be absent at Leghorn. Meanwhile Campbell, alarmed by the news of
the preparations at Elba, was sending off a request to Genoa that
another British warship should be sent to frustrate the designs of the
"restless villain."
But it was now too late. On that Sunday night at 9 p.m., the Emperor,
with 1,050 officers and men, embarked at Porto Ferrajo on the
"Inconstant" and six smaller craft. Favoured by the light airs that
detained the British vessel, his flotilla glided away northwards; and
not before the 28th did Adye and Campbell find that the imperial eagle
had flown. Meanwhile Napoleon had eluded the French guard-ship,
"Fleur-de-Lys," and ordered his vessels to scatter. On doubling the
north of Corsica, he fell in with another French cruiser, the
"Zephyr," which hailed his brig and inquired how the great man was.
"Marvellously well," came the reply, suggested by Napoleon himself to
his captain. The royalist cruiser passed on contented. And thus,
thanks to the imbecility of the old Governments and of their servants,
Napoleon was able to land his little force safely in the Golfe de
Jouan on the afternoon of March 1st.[464] Is it surprising that
foreigners, who had not yet fathomed the eccentricities of British
officialdom, should have believed that we connived at Napoleon's
escape? It needed the blood shed at Waterloo to wipe out the
misconception.
"I shall reach Paris without firing a shot." Such was the prophecy of
Napoleon to his rather questioning followers as they neared the coast
of Provence. It seemed the wildest of dreams. Could the man, who had
been wellnigh murdered by the rabble of Avignon and Orgon, hope to
march in peace through that royalist province? And, if he ever reached
the central districts where men loved him better, would the soldiery
dare to disobey the commands of Soult, the new Minister of War, of
Ney, Berthier, Macdonald, St. Cyr, Suchet, Augereau, and of many more
who were now honestly serving the Bourbons? The King and his brothers
had no fears. They laughed at the folly of this rash intruder.
At first their confidence seemed justified. Napoleon's overtures to
the officer and garrison of Antibes were repulsed, and the small
detachment which he sent there was captured. Undaunted by this check,
he decided to hurry on by way of Grasse towards Grenoble, thus
forestalling the news of his first failure, and avoiding the royalist
districts of the lower Rhone.
Napoleon was visibly perturbed as he drew near to Grenoble. There the
officer in command, General Marchand, had threatened to exterminate
this "band of brigands"; and his soldiers as yet showed no signs of
defection. But, by some bad management, only one battalion held the
defile of Laffray on the south. As the bear-skins of the Guard came in
sight, the royalist ranks swerved and drew back. Then the Emperor came
forward, and ordered his men to lower their arms. "There he is: fire
on him," cried a royalist officer. Not a shot rang out.--"Soldiers,"
said the well-known voice, "if there is one among you who wishes to
kill his Emperor, he can do so. Here I am." At once a great shout of
"Vive l'Empereur" burst forth: and the battalion broke into an
enthusiastic rush towards the idol of the soldiery.
That scene decided the whole course of events. A little later, a young
noble, Labédoyère, leads over his regiment; at Grenoble the garrison
stands looking on and cheering while the Bonapartists batter in the
gates; and the hero is borne in amidst a whirlwind of cheers. At
Lyons, the Comte d'Artois and Macdonald seek safety in flight; and
soldiers and workmen welcome their chief with wild acclaim; but amidst
the wonted cries are heard threats of "The Bourbons to the
guillotine," "Down with the priests!"
The shouts were ominous: they showed that the Jacobins meant to use
Napoleon merely as a tool for the overthrow of the Bourbons. The
"have-nots" cheered him, but the "haves" shivered at his coming, for
every thinking man knew that it implied war with Europe.[465] Napoleon
saw the danger of relying merely on malcontents and sought to arouse a
truly national feeling. He therefore on March 13th issued a series of
popular decrees, that declared the rule of the Bourbons at an end,
dissolved the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and summoned the
"electoral colleges" of the Empire to a great assembly, or Champ de
Mai, at Paris. He further proscribed the white flag, ordered the
wearing of the tri-colour cockade, disbanded the hated "Maison du
Roi," abolished feudal titles, and sequestered the domains of the
Bourbon princes. In brief, he acted as the Bonaparte of 1799. He then
set forth for Paris, at the head of 14,000 men.
Ney was at the same time marching with 6,000 men from Besançon. He had
lately assured Louis XVIII. that Napoleon deserved to be brought to
Paris in an iron cage. But now his soldiers kept a sullen silence. At
Bourg the leading regiment deserted; and while beset by difficulties,
the Marshal received from Napoleon the assurance that he would be
received as he was on the day after the Moskwa (Borodino). This was
enough. He drew his troops around him, and, to their lively joy,
declared for the Emperor (March 14th). Napoleon was as good as his
word. Never prone to petty malice, he now received with equal
graciousness those officers who flung themselves at his feet, and
those who staunchly served the King to the very last. Before this
sunny magnanimity the last hopes of the Bourbons melted away. Greeted
on all sides by soldiers and peasants, the enchanter advances on
Paris, whence the King and Court beat a hasty retreat towards Lille.
Crowds of peasants line and almost block the road from Fontainebleau
to catch a glimpse of the gray coat; and, to expedite matters, he
drives on in a cabriolet with his faithful Caulaincourt. Escorted by a
cavalcade of officers he enters Paris after nightfall; but there the
tone of the public is cool and questioning, until the front of the
Tuileries facing the river is reached.[466] Then a mighty shout arises
from the throng of jubilant half-pay officers as the well-known figure
alights: he passes in, and is half carried up the grand staircase,
"his eyes half closed," says Lavalette, "his hands extended before him
like a blind man, and expressing his joy only by a smile." Ladies are
there also, who have spent the weary hours of waiting in stripping off
_fleurs-de-lys_, and gleefully exposing the N's and golden bees
concealed by cheap Bourbon upholstery. Anon they fly back to this
task; the palace wears its wonted look; and the brief spell of Bourbon
rule seems gone for ever.
To his contemporaries this triumph of Napoleon appeared a miracle
before which the voice of criticism must be dumb. And yet, if we
remember the hollowness of the Bourbon restoration, the tactlessness
of the princes and the greed of their partisans, it seems strange that
the house of cards reared by the Czar and Talleyrand remained standing
even for eleven months. Napoleon correctly described the condition of
France when he said to his comrades on the "Inconstant": "There is no
historic example that induces me to venture on this bold enterprise:
but I have taken into account the surprise that will seize on men, the
state of public feeling, the resentment against the allies, the love
of my soldiers, in fine, all the Napoleonic elements that still
germinate in our beautiful France."[467]
Still less was he deceived by the seemingly overwhelming impulse in
his favour. He looked beyond the hysteria of welcome to the cold and
critical fit which follows; and he saw danger ahead. When Mollien
complimented him on his return, he replied, alluding to the general
indifference at the departure of the Bourbons: "My dear fellow! People
have let me come, just as they let the others go." The remark reveals
keen insight into the workings of French public opinion. The whole
course of the Revolution had shown how easy it was to destroy a
Government, how difficult to rebuild. In truth, the events of March,
1815, may be called the epilogue of the revolutionary drama. The royal
House had offended the two most powerful of French interests, the
military and the agrarian, so that soldiers and peasants clutched
eagerly at Napoleon as a mighty lever for its overthrow.
The Emperor wisely formed his Ministry before the first enthusiasm
cooled down. Maret again became Secretary of State; Decrès took the
Navy; Gaudin the finances; Mollien was coaxed back to the Treasury,
and Davoust reluctantly accepted the Ministry of War. Savary declined
to be burdened with the Police, and Napoleon did not press him: for
that clever intriguer, Fouché, was pointed out as the only man who
could rally the Jacobins around the imperial throne: to him, then,
Napoleon assigned this important post, though fully aware that in his
hands it was a two-edged tool. Carnot was finally persuaded to become
Minister for Home Affairs.
Napoleon's fate, however, was to be decided, not at Paris, but by the
statesmen assembled at Vienna. There time was hanging somewhat
heavily, and the news of Napoleon's escape was welcomed at first as a
grateful diversion. Talleyrand asserted that Napoleon would aim at
Italy, but Metternich at once remarked: "He will make straight for
Paris." When this prophecy proved to be alarmingly true, a drastic
method was adopted to save the Bourbons. The plenipotentiaries drew up
a declaration that Bonaparte, having broken the compact which
established him at Elba--the only legal title attaching to his
existence--had placed himself outside the bounds of civil and social
relations, and, as an enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,
was consigned to "public prosecution" (March 13th).[468] The rigour of
this decree has been generally condemned. But, after all, it did not
exceed in harshness Napoleon's own act of proscription against Stein;
it was a desperate attempt to stop the flight of the imperial eagle to
Paris and to save France from war with Europe.
Public considerations were doubtless commingled with the promptings of
personal hatred. We are assured that Talleyrand was the author of this
declaration, which had the complete approval of the Czar. But Napoleon
had one enemy more powerful than Alexander, more insidious than
Talleyrand, and that was--his own past. Everywhere the spectre of war
rose up before the imagination of men. The merchant pictured his ships
swept off by privateers: the peasant saw his homestead desolate: the
housewife dreamt of her larder emptied by taxes, and sons carried off
for the war. At Berlin, wrote Jackson, all was agitation, and
everybody said that _the work of last year would have to be done over
again_.
In England the current of public feeling was somewhat weakened by the
drifts and eddies of party politics. Many of the Whigs made a popular
hero of Napoleon, some from a desire to overthrow the Liverpool
Ministry that proscribed him; others because they believed, or tried
to believe, that the return of Napoleon concerned only France, and
that he would leave Europe alone if Europe left him alone. Others
there were again, as Hazlitt, who could not ignore the patent fact
that Napoleon was an international personage and had violated a
European compact, yet nevertheless longed for his triumph over the bad
old Governments and did not trouble much as to what would come next.
But, on the whole, the judgment of well-informed people may be summed
up in the conclusion of that keen lawyer, Crabb Robinson: "The
question is, peace with Bonaparte now, or war with him in Germany two
years hence."[469] The matter came to a test on April 28th, when
Whitbread's motion against war was rejected by 273 to 72.[470]
If that was the general opinion in days when Ministers and
diplomatists alone knew the secrets of the game, it was certain that
the initiated, who remembered his wrongheaded refusals to make peace
even in the depressing days of 1814, would strive to crush him before
he could gather all his strength. In vain did he protest that he had
learnt by sad experience and was a changed man. They interpreted his
pacific speeches by their experience of his actions; and thus his
overweening conduct in the past blotted out all hope of his crowning a
romantic career by a peaceful and benignant close. The declaration of
outlawry was followed, on March 25th, by the conclusion of treaties
between the Powers, which virtually renewed those framed at Chaumont.
In quick succession the smaller States gave in their adhesion; and
thus the coalition which tact and diplomacy had dissolved was
revivified by the fears which the mighty warrior aroused. Napoleon
made several efforts to sow distrust among the Powers; and chance
placed in his hands a veritable apple of discord.
The Bourbons in their hasty flight from Paris had left behind several
State papers, among them being the recent secret compact against
Russia and Prussia. Napoleon promptly sent this document to the Czar
at Vienna; but his hopes of sundering the allies were soon blighted.
Though Alexander and Metternich had for months refused to exchange a
word or a look, yet the news of Napoleon's adventure brought about a
speedy reconciliation; and when the compromising paper from Paris was
placed in the Czar's hands, he took the noble revenge of sending for
Metternich, casting it into the fire, and adjuring the Minister to
forget recent disputes in the presence of their common enemy. Napoleon
strove to detach Austria from the Coalition, as did also Fouché on his
own account; but the overtures led to no noteworthy result, except
that Napoleon, on finding out Fouché's intrigue, threatened to have
him shot--a threat which that necessary tool treated with quiet
derision.
A few acts of war occurred at once; but Austria and Russia pressed for
delay, the latter with the view of overthrowing Murat. That potentate
now drew the sword on behalf of Napoleon, and summoned the Italians to
struggle for their independence. But he was quickly overpowered at
Tolentino (May 3rd), and fled from his kingdom, disguised as a sailor,
to Toulon. There he offered his sword to Napoleon; but the Emperor
refused his offer and blamed him severely, alleging that he had
compromised the fortunes of France by rendering peace impossible. The
charge must be pronounced not proven. The allies had taken their
resolve to destroy Napoleon on March 13th, and Murat's adventure
merely postponed the final struggle for a month or so.
Napoleon used this time of respite to form his army and stamp out
opposition in France. The French royalist bands gave him little
trouble. In the south-west the _fleur-de-lys_ was speedily beaten
down; but in La Vendée royalism had its roots deep-seated. Headed by
the two Larochejacqueleins, the peasants made a brave fight; and
20,000 regulars failed to break them up until the month of June was
wearing on. What might not those 20,000 men, detained in La Vendée,
have effected on the crest of Waterloo?
Napoleon's preoccupation, however, was the conduct of the Jacobins in
France, who had been quickened to immense energy by the absurdities of
the royalist reaction and felt that they had the new ruler in their
power. A game of skill ensued, which took up the greater part of the
"Hundred Days" of Napoleon's second reign. His conduct proved that he
was not sure of success. He felt out of touch with this new
liberty-loving France, so different from the passively devoted people
whom he had left in 1814; he bridled his impetuous nature, reasoning
with men, inviting criticism, and suggesting doubts as to his own
proposals, in a way that contrasted curiously with the old
sledge-hammer methods.
"He seemed," writes Mollien, "habitually calm, pensive, and
preserved without affectation a serious dignity, with little of
that old audacity and self-confidence which had never met with
insuperable obstacles.... As his thoughts were cramped in a narrow
space girt with precipices instead of soaring freely over a vast
horizon of power, they became laborious and
This Pegasus in harness chafed at the unwonted yoke; and at times the
old instincts showed themselves. On one occasion, when the subject
turned on the new passion for liberty, he said to Lavalette with a
question in his voice: "All this will last two or three years?" "Your
Majesty," replied the Minister, "must not believe that. It will last
for ever."
The first grave difficulty was to frame a constitution, especially as
his Lyons decrees led men to believe that it would emanate from the
people, and be sanctioned by them in a great _Champ de Mai_. Perhaps
this was impossible. A great part of France was a prey to civil
strifes; and it was a skilful device to intrust the drafting of a
constitution to Benjamin Constant.
This brilliant writer and talker had now run through the whole gamut
of political professions. A pronounced Jacobin and free-thinker during
the Consulate, he subsequently retired to Germany, where he unlearnt
his politics, his religion, and his philosophy. The sight of
Napoleon's devastations made him a supporter of the throne and altar,
compelled him to recast his treatises, and drove him to consort with
the quaint circle of pietists who prayed and grovelled with Madame de
Krudener. Returning to France at the Restoration, he wielded his
facile pen in the cause of the monarchy, and fluttered after the
fading charms of Madame Récamier, confiding to his friend, De Broglie,
that he knew not whether to trust most to divine or satanic agencies
for success in this lawless chase. In March, 1815, he thundered in the
Press against the brigand of Elba--until the latter won him over in
the space of a brief interview, and persuaded him to draft, with a few
colleagues, the final constitution of the age.
Not that Constant had a free hand: he worked under imperial
inspiration. The present effort was named the Additional
Act--additional, that is, to the Constitutions of the Empire (April
22nd, 1815). It established a Chamber of Peers nominated by Napoleon,
with hereditary rights, and a Chamber of Representatives elected on
the plan devised in August, 1802. The Emperor was to nominate all the
judges, including the _juges de paix;_ the jury system was maintained,
and liberty of the Press was granted. The Chambers also gained
somewhat wider control over the Ministers.[471]
This Act called forth a hail of criticisms. When the Council of State
pointed out that there was no guarantee against confiscations,
Napoleon's eyes flashed fire, and he burst forth:
"You are pushing me in a way that is not mine. You are weakening
and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. Public
opinion was excellent: now it is execrable. France is asking what
has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to master
Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and of
natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first justice is the
public safety."
The councillors quailed under this tirade and conceded the
point--though we may here remark that Napoleon showed a wise clemency
towards his foes, and confiscated the estates of only thirteen of
them.
Public opinion became more and more "execrable." Some historians have
asserted that the decline of Napoleon's popularity was due, not to the
Additional Act, but to the menaces of war from a united Europe: this
may be doubted. Miot de Melito, who was working for the Emperor in the
West, states that "never had a political error more immediate effects"
than that Act; and Lavalette, always a devoted adherent, asserts
that Frenchmen thenceforth "saw only a despot in the Emperor and forgot
about the enemy."
As a display of military enthusiasm, the _Champ de Mai_, of June 1st,
recalled the palmy days gone by. Veterans and conscripts hailed their
chief with jubilant acclaim, as with a few burning words he handed
them their eagles. But the people on the outskirts cheered only when
the troops cheered. Why should they, or the "electors" of France,
cheer? They had hoped to give her a constitution; and they were now
merely witnesses to Napoleon's oath that he would obey the
constitution of his own making. As a civic festival, it was a mockery
in the eyes of men who remembered the "Feast of Pikes," and were not
to be dazzled by the waving of banners and the gorgeous costumes of
Napoleon and his brothers. The opening of the Chambers six days later
gave an outlet to the general discontent. The report that Napoleon
designed his brother Lucien for the Presidency of the Lower House is
incorrect. That honest democrat Lanjuinais was elected. Everything
portended a constitutional crisis, when the summons to arms rang
forth; and the chief, warning the deputies not to imitate the Greeks
of the late Empire by discussing abstract propositions while the
battering-ram thundered at their gates, cut short these barren debates
by that appeal to the sword which had rarely belied his hopes.
* * * * *