of the great scenes, joyfully falls back upon his talent; he "goes
his way gossiping," as Madame de Sévigné says; he chats of Napoleon's
passage to Elba, of the seduction exercised by Napoleon over the
English sailors, excepting Hinton[182], who could not hear the praises
given to the Emperor without muttering the word "humbug." When Napoleon
left the ship, Hinton wished "His Honour" good health and better luck
the next time. Napoleon typified all the littlenesses and all the
greatnesses of mankind.
*
While Bonaparte, known to the universe, was escaping amid curses from
France, Louis XVIII., everywhere forgotten, was leaving London under a
canopy of white banners and crowns. Napoleon, on landing in the island
of Elba, found back his strength there. Louis XVIII., on landing at
Calais[183], might have seen Louvel[184]; he met General Maison[185],
commissioned, sixteen years after, to put Charles X. on board at
Cherbourg. Charles X., apparently to render him worthy of his future
mission, later gave M. Maison the baton of a marshal of France, even as
a knight, before fighting, conferred knighthood upon the man of lower
rank with whom he deigned to measure swords.
I dreaded the effect of Louis XVIII.'s appearance. I hastened to go
ahead of him to the residence whence Joan of Arc[186] fell into the
hands of the English and where I was shown a volume struck by one of
the cannon-balls hurled against Bonaparte. What would people think at
the sight of the royal invalid replacing the horseman who might have
said with Attila:
"The grass no longer grows wherever my horse has passed."
With no mission or taste for it, I undertook (I was clearly under a
spell) a somewhat difficult task, that of describing the arrival at
Compiègne, of causing the son of St. Louis to be seen as I idealized
him by the aid of the Muses. I expressed myself thus:
"The King's coach was preceded by the generals and the
marshals of France who had gone to meet his Majesty. There
were no more cries of 'God save the King!' but confused
clamours amid which one distinguished only accents of tender
emotion and joy. The King wore a blue coat, marked only by a
star and a pair of epaulettes; his legs were encased in wide
gaiters of red velvet, edged with a narrow gold braid. Seated
in his arm-chair, with his old-fashioned gaiters, holding
his cane between his knees, he suggests Louis XIV.[187] at
fifty years of age.... Marshals Macdonald[188], Ney[189],
Moncey[190], Sérurier[191], Brune[192], the Prince de
Neuchâtel[193], all the generals, all the persons present
alike received the most affectionate words from the King. So
great in France is the power of the legitimate Sovereign, the
magic attached to the name of the King. A man arrives alone
from exile, despoiled of everything, without a following,
guards, or riches; he has nothing to give, almost nothing to
promise. He alights from his carriage, leaning on the arm of
a young woman; he shows himself to captains who have never
seen him, to grenadiers who hardly know his name. Who is that
man? Tis the King! Every one falls at his feet[194]!"
[Sidenote: Return of Louis XVIII.]
What I said above of the warriors, with the object which I was
proposing to attain, was true as regards the leaders; but I lied with
respect to the soldiers. I have present in my memory, as though I saw
it still, the spectacle which I witnessed when Louis XVIII., entering
Paris on the 3rd of May, went to visit Notre-Dame: they had wished
to spare the King the sight of the foreign troops; a regiment of the
old foot-guards kept the line from the Pont-Neuf to Notre-Dame, along
the Quai des Orfèvres. I do not believe that human faces ever wore so
threatening and so terrible an expression. Those grenadiers, covered
with wounds, the conquerors of Europe, who had seen so many thousands
of cannon-balls pass over their heads, who smelt of fire and powder;
those same men, robbed of their captain, were forced to salute an old
king, disabled by time, not war, watched as they were by an army of
Russians, Austrians and Prussians, in Napoleon's invaded capital. Some,
moving the skin of their foreheads, brought down their great bear-skin
busbies over their eyes, as though to keep them from seeing; others
lowered the corners of their mouth in angry scorn; others again showed
their teeth through their mustachios, like tigers. When they presented
arms, it was with a furious movement, and the sound of those arms made
one tremble. Never, we must admit, have men been put to so great a
test and suffered so dire a torment. If, at that moment, they had been
summoned to vengeance, it would have been necessary to exterminate them
to the last, or they would have swallowed the earth.
At the end of the line was a young hussar, on horse-back; he held a
drawn sword, and made it leap and as it were dance with a convulsive
movement of anger. His face was pale; his eyes rolled in their sockets;
he opened and shut his mouth by turns, clashing his teeth together,
and stifling cries of which one heard only the first sound. He caught
sight of a Russian officer: the look which he darted at him cannot be
described. When the King's carriage passed before him, he made his
horse spring, and certainly he had the temptation to fling himself upon
the King.
The Restoration committed an irreparable mistake at its outset: it
ought to have disbanded the army, while retaining the marshals,
generals, military governors and officers in their pensions, honours
and rank; the soldiers would afterwards have successively returned
into the reconstituted army, as they have since done into the Royal
Guard: the Legitimate Monarchy would not then have had against it,
from the first, those soldiers of the Empire, organized, divided into
brigades, denominated as they had been in the days of their victories,
unceasingly talking together of the time that was past, nourishing
regrets and feelings hostile to their new master.
The miserable resurrection of the Maison Rouge[195], that mixture
of soldiers of the old Monarchy and fighting men of the new Empire,
augmented the evil: to believe that veterans distinguished on a
thousand battle-fields would not be offended at seeing young men, very
brave no doubt, but for the most part new to the calling of arms,
wearing symbols of high military rank without having earned them, was
to betray a want of knowledge of human nature.
[Sidenote: Declaration of Saint-Ouen.]
Alexander had been to visit Louis XVIII. during the stay which the
latter made at Compiègne. Louis XVIII. offended him by his haughtiness:
this interview led to the Declaration of Saint-Ouen of the 2nd of May.
The King said in this that he had resolved to give, as the basis of the
Constitution which he proposed to award to his people, the following
guarantees: representative government divided into two bodies,
taxes freely granted, public and individual liberty, liberty of the
press, liberty of public worship, sacred inviolability of property,
irrevocability of the sale of national goods, irremovable judges and
an independent judicial bench, every Frenchman admissible to every
employment, etc., etc.
This declaration, although it was in keeping with Louis XVIII.'s
intelligence, nevertheless pertained neither to him nor to his
advisers; it was simply the time which was issuing from its rest: its
wings had been folded, its soaring suspended since 1792; it was now
resuming its flight, or its course. The excesses of the Terror, the
despotism of Bonaparte had caused ideas to turn back again; but, so
soon as the obstacles that had been opposed to them were destroyed,
they flowed into the bed which they were at the at same time to follow
and to dig. Matters were taken up at the point at which they had been
stopped; all that had passed was as though it had not happened: the
human race, thrust back to the commencement of the Revolution, had only
lost forty years[196] of its life; well, what is forty years in the
general life of society? That gap disappears when the cut fragments of
time have been joined together.
The Treaty of Paris, between the Allies and France, was concluded
on the 30th of May 1814. It was agreed that, within two months, all
the Powers engaged on either side in the present war should send
plenipotentiaries to Vienna to settle the final arrangements in a
general congress.
On the 4th of June, Louis XVIII. appeared in royal session in a
collective assembly of the Legislative Body and a fraction of the
Senate. He delivered a noble speech: old, by-gone, worn-out, these
wearisome details now serve only as an historic thread.
To the greater part of the nation, the Charter possessed the drawback
of being "granted:" this most useless word stirred up the burning
question of royal or popular sovereignty. Louis XVIII. also dated
his boon from the nineteenth year of his reign, considering that of
Bonaparte as null and void, in the same way as Charles II[197]. had
taken a clean leap over Cromwell's head: it was a kind of insult to
the sovereigns, who had all recognised Napoleon and who were at that
very moment in Paris. That obsolete language and those pretensions of
the ancient monarchies added nothing to the lawfulness of the right
and were mere puerile anachronisms[198]. That apart, the Charter,
replacing despotism, bringing us legal liberty, was calculated to
satisfy conscientious men. Nevertheless, the Royalists, who gained
so many advantages by it, who, issuing from their village, or their
paltry fireside, or the obscure posts on which they had lived under
the Empire, were called to a lofty and public existence, received the
boon only in a grudging spirit; the Liberals, who had accommodated
themselves whole-heartedly to the tyranny of Bonaparte, thought the
Charter a regular slave-code. We have returned to the time of Babel,
but we no longer work at a common monument of confusion: each builds
his tower to his own height, according to his strength and stature.
For the rest, if the Charter appeared defective, it was because the
Revolution had not run its course; the principles of equality and
democracy lay at the bottom of men's minds and worked in a contrary
direction to the monarchical order.
The Allied Princes lost no time in leaving Paris. Alexander, when
going away, had a religious sacrifice celebrated on the Place de la
Concorde[199]. An altar was erected where the scaffold of Louis XVI.
had stood. Seven Muscovite priests performed the service, and the
foreign troops defiled before the altar. The _Te Deum_ was sung to one
of the beautiful airs of the old Greek music. The soldiers and the
sovereigns bent their knee to the ground to receive the benediction.
The thoughts of the French were carried back to 1793 and 1794, when
the oxen refused to go over pavements which the smell of blood made
hateful to them. What hand had led to the expiatory festival those men
of all countries, those sons of the ancient barbarian invasions, those
Tartars, some of whom dwelt in sheep-skin tents beneath the Great Wall
of China? Those are spectacles which the feeble generations that will
follow my century shall no longer see.
[Sidenote: The first Restoration.]
In the first year of the Restoration, I assisted at the third
transformation of society: I had seen the old Monarchy turn into
the Constitutional Monarchy, and the latter into the Republic; I
had seen the Republic change into military despotism; I had seen
military despotism turn back into a free Monarchy, the new ideas and
the new generations return to the old principles and the old men. The
marshals of the Empire become marshals of France; with the uniforms
of Napoleon's Guard were mingled the uniforms of the bodyguards and
the Maison Rouge, cut precisely after the old patterns; the old
Duc d'Havré[200], with his powdered wig and his black cane, ambled
along with shaking head, as Captain of the Body-guards, near Marshal
Victor[201], limping in the Bonaparte style; the Duc de Mouchy[202],
who had never seen a shot fired, went in to Mass near Marshal
Oudinot[203], riddled with wounds; the Palace of the Tuileries, so
proper and soldierly under Napoleon, became filled, instead of the
smell of powder, with the odours of the breakfasts which ascended
on every side: under messieurs the lords of the Bed-chamber, with
messieurs the officers of the Mouth and the Wardrobe, everything
resumed an air of domesticity. In the streets, one saw decrepit
Emigrants wearing the airs and clothes of former days, most respectable
men no doubt, but appearing as outlandish among the modern crowd
as did the Republican captains among the soldiers of Napoleon. The
ladies of the Imperial Court introduced the dowagers of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain and taught them "their way about" the palace. There
arrived deputations from Bordeaux, adorned with armlets; parish
captains from the Vendée, wearing La Rochejacquelein hats. These
different persons retained the expression of the feelings, thoughts,
habits, manners familiar to them. Liberty, which lay at the root
of that period, made things exist together which, at first sight,
appeared as though they ought not to exist; but one had difficulty in
recognising that liberty, because it wore the colours of the Ancient
Monarchy and of the Imperial Despotism. Everyone, too, was badly
acquainted with the language of the Constitution: the Royalists made
glaring errors when talking Charter; the Imperialists were still less
well-informed; the Conventionals, who had become, in turn, counts,
barons, senators of Napoleon and peers of Louis XVIII., lapsed at one
time into the Republican dialect which they had almost forgotten, at
another into the Absolutist idiom which they had learned thoroughly.
Lieutenant-generals had been promoted to game-keepers. Aides-de-camp of
the last military tyrant were heard to prate of the inviolable liberty
of the peoples, and regicides to sustain the sacred dogma of the
Legitimacy.
These metamorphoses would be hateful, if they did not in part belong
to the flexibility of the French genius. The people of Athens governed
itself; orators appealed to its passions in the public places; the
sovereign crowd was composed of sculptors, painters, artizans, "who
are wont to be spectators of speeches and hearers of deeds[204]," as
Thucydides says. But when, good or bad, the decree had been delivered,
who issued to execute it from amid that incoherent and inexpert mass?
Socrates, Phocion, Pericles, Alcibiades.
*
Is it the Royalists who are "to blame for the Restoration," as is
urged to-day? Not in the least: it was as though one should say that
thirty millions of men had stood aghast, while a handful of Legitimists
accomplished a detested restoration, against the wish of all, by
waving a few handkerchiefs and putting a ribbon of their wives' in
their hats! The vast majority of Frenchmen was, it is true, full of
joy; but that majority was not a _Legitimist_ one in the limited
sense of the word, applicable only to the rigid partisans of the old
Monarchy. The majority was a mass composed of every shade of opinion,
happy at being delivered, and violently incensed against the man whom
it accused of all its misfortunes: hence the success of my pamphlet.
How many avowed aristocrats were numbered among those who proclaimed
the King's name? Messieurs Mathieu and Adrien de Montmorency; the
Messieurs de Polignac, escaped from their jail; M. Alexis de Noailles;
M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld. Did those seven or eight men, whom the
people neither recognised nor followed, lay down the law to a whole
nation?
Madame de Montcalm had sent me a bag containing twelve hundred francs
to distribute among the pure Legitimist race: I sent it back to her,
not having succeeded in placing a crown-piece. An ignominious cord
was fastened round the neck of the statue which surmounted the column
in the Place Vendôme; there were so few Royalists to raise a hubbub
around glory and to pull at the rope that the authorities themselves,
Bonapartists all, had to lower their master's image with the aid of
a scaffold; the colossus was forced to bow his head: he fell at the
feet of the sovereigns of Europe, who had so often lain prostrate
before him. It was the men of the Republic and of the Empire who
enthusiastically greeted the Restoration. The conduct and ingratitude
of the persons raised by the Revolution were abominable towards him
whom they affect to-day to regret and admire.
[Sidenote: Its supporters.]
Imperialists and Liberals, it is you into whose hands the power fell,
you who knelt down before the sons of Henry IV. It was quite natural
that the Royalists should be happy to recover their Princes and to see
the end of the reign of him whom they regarded as an usurper; but you,
the creatures of that usurper, surpassed the feelings of the Royalists
in exaggeration. The ministers, the high dignitaries vied with each
other in taking the oath to the Legitimacy; all the civil and judicial
authorities crowded on each other's heels to swear hatred against the
proscribed new dynasty and love to the ancient race whom they had a
hundred and a hundred times condemned. Who drew up those proclamations,
those adulatory addresses, so insulting to Napoleon, with which France
was flooded? The Royalists? No: the ministers, the generals, the
authorities chosen and maintained in office by Bonaparte. Where was
the jobbing of the Restoration done? At the Royalists'? No: at M. de
Talleyrand's. With whom? With M. de Pradt, almoner to "the God Mars"
and mitred mountebank. Where and with whom did the Lieutenant-General
of the Kingdom dine on his arrival? At the Royalists' and with
Royalists? No: at the Bishop of Autun's, with M. de Caulaincourt.
Where were entertainments given to "the infamous foreign princes?" At
the country-houses of the Royalists? No: at Malmaison, at the Empress
Joséphine's. To whom did Napoleon's dearest friends, Berthier, for
instance, carry their ardent devotion? To the Legitimacy. Who spent
their existences with the Emperor Alexander, with that brutal Tartar?
The classes of the Institute, the scholars, the men of letters, the
philosophers, philanthropists, theophilanthropists and others; they
returned enchanted, laden with praises and snuff-boxes. As for us poor
devils of Legitimists, we were admitted nowhere; we went for nothing.
Sometimes we were told, in the streets, to go home to bed; sometimes
we were recommended not to shout "God Save the King!" too loud,
others having undertaken that responsibility. So far from compelling
anyone to be a Legitimist, those in power declared that nobody would
be obliged to change his conduct or his language, that the Bishop of
Autun would be no more compelled to say Mass under the Royalty than
he had been compelled to attend it under the Empire. I saw no lady of
the castle-keep, no Joan of Arc proclaim the rightful sovereign with
falcon on wrist or lance in hand; but Madame de Talleyrand[205], whom
Bonaparte had fastened to her husband like a sign-board, drove through
the streets in a calash, singing hymns on the pious Family of the
Bourbons. A few sheets fluttering from the windows of the familiars
of the Imperial Court made the good Cossacks believe that there were
as many lilies in the hearts of the converted Bonapartists as white
rags at their casements. It is wonderful how far contagion will go
in France, and a man would cry, "Off with my head!" if he heard his
neighbour cry the same. The Imperialists went so far as to enter our
houses and make us Bourbonists put out, by way of spotless flags, such
white remnants as our presses contained. This happened at my house; but
Madame de Chateaubriand would have none of it, and valiantly defended
her muslins.
*
[Sidenote: The Restoration ministry.]
The Legislative Body, transformed into a Chamber of Deputies, and
the House of Peers, composed of 154 members, appointed for life, and
including over 60 senators, formed the two first Legislative Chambers.
M. de Talleyrand, installed at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, left
for the Congress of Vienna, the opening of which was fixed for the 3rd
of November, in execution of Clause 32 of the Treaty of the 30th of
May; M. de Jaucourt held the portfolio during an interim which lasted
until the Battle of Waterloo. The Abbé de Montesquiou became Minister
of the Interior, having M. Guizot[206] as his secretary-general; M.
Malouet[207] entered the Admiralty: he died, and was succeeded by M.
Beugnot[208]; General Dupont[209] obtained the War Office; he was
replaced by Marshal Soult[210], who distinguished himself through the
erection of the funeral monument at Quiberon; the Duc de Blacas[211]
was Minister of the Royal Household; M. Anglès[212], Prefect of Police;
Councillor Dambray[213], Minister of Justice; the Abbé Louis[214],
Minister of Finance.
On the 21st of October, the Abbé de Montesquiou introduced the first
law on the subject of the press; it submitted every writing of less
than twenty pages of print to the censorship: M. Guizot worked out this
first law of liberty.
Carnot[215] addressed a letter to the King; he admitted that the
Bourbons "had been joyfully received;" but, taking no account of the
shortness of the time, nor of all that the Charter granted, he gave
haughty lessons together with risky advice: all this is worth nothing
when one has to accept the rank of minister and the title of count
of the Empire; it is not becoming to show one's self proud towards a
weak and liberal Prince when one has been submissive towards a violent
and despotic Prince, when, a worn-out machine of the Terror, one has
found one's self unequal to the calculation of the proportions of
Napoleonic warfare. I sent to the press, in reply, my _Réflexions
politiques_[216]; they contain the substance of the _Monarchie selon
la Charte._ M. Lainé[217], the President of the Chamber of Deputies,
spoke of this work to the King with praise. The King always seemed
charmed with the services which I had the happiness to render him;
Heaven seemed to have thrown over my shoulders the mantle of herald of
the Legitimacy: but the greater the success of the work, the less did
its author please His Majesty. The _Réflexions politiques_ divulged my
Constitutional doctrines: the Court received an impression from them
which my fidelity to the Bourbons has been unable to wipe out. Louis
XVIII. used to say to his intimates:
"Beware of ever admitting a poet into your affairs: he will ruin all.
Those people are good for nothing."
[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Duras.]
A powerful and lively friendship at that time filled my heart: the
Duchesse de Duras[218] had imaginative powers, and even some of the
facial expression of Madame de Staël: she has given a proof of her
talent as an author in _Ourika._ On her return from the Emigration,
she led a secluded life, for many years, in her Château d'Ussé, on the
banks of the Loire, and I first heard speak of her in the beautiful
gardens at Méréville, after having passed near her in London without
meeting her. She came to Paris for the education of her charming
daughters, Félicie[219] and Clara[220]. Relations of family, province,
literary and political opinion opened the door of her company to
me. Her warmth of soul, her nobility of character, her loftiness of
mind, her generosity of sentiment made her a superior woman. At the
commencement of the Restoration, she took me under her protection; for,
in spite of all that I had done for the Legitimate Monarchy and the
services which Louis XVIII. confessed that he had received from me, I
had been placed so far on one side that I was thinking of retiring to
Switzerland. Perhaps I should have done well: in those solitudes which
Napoleon had intended for me as his ambassador to the mountains, might
I not have been happier than in the Palace of the Tuileries? When I
entered those halls on the return of the Legitimacy, they made upon
me an impression almost as painful as on the day when I saw Bonaparte
there prepared to kill the Duc d'Enghien. Madame de Duras spoke of
me to M. de Blacas. He replied that I was quite free to go I where I
would. Madame de Duras was so tempestuous, so courageous on behalf of
her friends, that a vacant embassy was dug up, the Embassy to Sweden.
Louis XVIII., already wearied of my noise, was happy to make a present
of me to his good brother, King Bernadotte. Did the latter imagine that
I was being sent to Stockholm to dethrone him? By the Lord, ye princes
of the earth, I dethrone nobody; keep your crowns, if you can, and
above all do not give them to me, for I "will none of them."
Madame de Duras, an excellent woman, who allowed me to call her my
sister, and whom I had the happiness of seeing in Paris during many
years, went to Nice to die[221]: one more wound re-opened. The Duchesse
de Duras saw much of Madame de Staël. I cannot conceive how I did
not come across Madame Récamier[222], who had returned from Italy to
France; I should have greeted the succour which came in aid of my
life. Already I no longer belonged to those mornings which console
themselves; I was on the verge of those evening hours which stand in
need of consolation.
*
On the 30th of December of the year 1814, the Legislative Chambers were
prorogued to the 1st of May 1815, as though they had been convoked for
the assembly of Bonaparte's _champ-de-mai._ On the 18th of January, the
remains were exhumed of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. I was present
at this exhumation in the cemetery[223] in which Fontaine[224] and
Percier[225] have since, at the pious call of Madame la Dauphine,
and in imitation of a sepulchral church at Rimini, raised what is
perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris. This cloister, formed
of a concatenation of tombs, strikes the imagination and fills it
with sadness. I have spoken, in Book IV. of these Memoirs, of the
exhumations of 1815[226]. In the midst of the bones, I recognised the
Queen's head by the smile which that head had given me at Versailles.
[Sidenote: The 21st of January.]
On the 21st of January, was laid the first stone of the ground-work
of the statue which was to be erected on the Place Louis XV., and
which was never erected. I wrote the funeral splendour of the 21st of
January; I said:
"The monks who came with the Oriflamme[227] to meet the
shrine of St. Louis will not receive the descendant of the
Sainted King. In the subterraneous abodes where dwelt those
annihilated kings and princes, Louis XVI. will lie alone!...
How is it that so many dead have risen? Why is Saint-Denis
deserted? Let us rather ask why its roof has been restored,
why its altar is left standing. What hand has reconstructed
the vault of those caverns and prepared those empty tombs?
The hand of that same man who was seated on the throne of the
Bourbons[228]! O Providence, he thought that he was preparing
sepulchres for his race, and he was but building the tomb of
Louis XVI.[229]!"
I long wished that the image of Louis XVI. might be set up on the
spot where the martyr shed his blood: I should no longer be of that
opinion. The Bourbons must be praised for thinking of Louis XVI. at
the first moment of their return. They were bound to touch their
foreheads with his ashes, before placing his crown on their heads.
Now I think that they ought not to have gone further. It was not in
Paris, as in London, a committee which tried the monarch: it was the
whole Convention; thence the annual reproach which a repeated funeral
ceremony seemed to make to the nation, apparently represented by
a complete assembly. Every people has fixed anniversaries for the
celebration of its triumphs, its disorders, or its misfortunes, for
all have, in an equal measure, desired to keep up the memory of one
and the other: we have had solemnities for the barricades, songs for
St. Bartholomew's Night, feasts for the death of Capet; but is it not
remarkable that the law is powerless to create days of remembrance,
whereas religion has made the obscurest saint live on from age to
age? If the fasts and prayers instituted for the sacrifice of Charles
I. still survive[230], it is because, in England, the State unites
religious to political supremacy and because, by virtue of that
supremacy, the 30th of January 1649 has become a _feria._ In France
things go differently: Rome alone has the right to command in religion;
thenceforth, of what value is an order published by a prince, a decree
promulgated by a political assembly, if another prince, another
assembly have the right to expunge them? I therefore think to-day that
the symbol of a feast which may be abolished, or the evidence of a
tragic catastrophe not consecrated by religion, is not fitly placed on
the road of the crowd carelessly and heedlessly pursuing its pleasures.
At the time in which we live, it is to be feared lest a monument raised
with the object of impressing horror of popular excesses might prompt
the longing to imitate them: evil tempts more than good; when wishing
to perpetuate the sorrow, one often perpetuates only the example. The
centuries do not adopt the bequests of mourning: they have present
cause enough for weeping, without undertaking to shed hereditary tears
as well.
[Sidenote: Reflections at Saint-Denis.]
On beholding the catafalque leaving the Cemetière de Desclozeaux[230b],
laden with the remains of the Queen and King, I felt a strong emotion;
I followed it with my eyes with a fatal presentiment. At last Louis
XVI. resumed his couch at Saint-Denis; Louis XVIII., on his side, slept
at the Louvre. The two brothers were together commencing a new era of
legitimate kings and sceptres: vain restoration of the throne and the
tomb, of which time has already swept away the dual dust.
Since I have spoken of those funeral ceremonies, which were so often
repeated, I will tell you of the incubus with which I used to be
oppressed when, after the ceremony, I walked in the evening in the
half-undraped basilica: that I dreamt of the vanity of human greatness
among those devasted tombs follows as the vulgar moral issuing from
the spectacle itself; but the workings of my mind did not stop at
that: I penetrated into the very nature of man. Is all emptiness and
absence in the region of the sepulchres? Is there nothing in that
nothingness? Are there no existences of nihility, no thoughts of dust?
Have those bones no modes of life with which we are unacquainted? Who
knows of the passions, the pleasures, the embraces of those dead? Are
the things which they have dreamt, thought, expected like themselves
idealities, engulfed pell-mell with themselves? Dreams, futures, joys,
sorrows, liberties and slaveries, powers and weaknesses, crimes and
virtues, honours and infamies, riches and miseries, talents, geniuses,
intelligences, glories, illusions, loves: are you but perceptions of
a moment, perceptions that pass with the destruction of the skulls in
which they take birth, with the extinction of the bosom in which once
beat a heart? In your eternal silence, O tombs, if tombs you be, is
nought heard but a mocking and eternal laughter? Is that laughter the
God, the sole derisive reality, which will survive the imposture of
this universe? Let us close our eyes; let us fill up life's despairing
abyss with those great and mysterious words of the martyr:
"I am a Christian!"
[128] Odo King of France (_d._ 898), the first king of the Capet
Dynasty.--T.
[129] Abbon (_d._ 923), nicknamed the Crooked, author of a Latin poem
on the siege of Paris by the Normans.
[130] Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia Queen of Prussia (1776-1810),
the beautiful wife of Frederic William III., and daughter of the Duke
of Mecklemburg-Strelitz. Napoleon was said to be enamoured of Louisa of
Prussia.--T.
[131] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. VIII.--T.
[132] _Ps._ XXI. 16. In the Vulgate: _Et lingua mea adhasit faucibus
meis._--B.
[133] The Emperor Alexander had expressed a wish to say, not at the
Tuileries, but at the Élysée; he remained there only a few hours, and
accepted the offer of the Prince of Talleyrand, who hastened to place
at his disposal his house in the Rue Saint-Florentin.--B.
[134] Pope Pius VII.--T.
[135] Fabian Wilhelm Prince von der Osten-Sacken (1752-1837) had fought
in all the campaigns against Turkey, Poland and France, and been taken
prisoner by Masséna at Zurich. Alexander appointed him Governor of
Paris in 1814.--T.
[136] Paul Count Schouvaloff (_circa_ 1775-1823), a distinguished
Russian general, the same who later escorted Napoleon to Fréjus.--T.
[137] Madame Charles Bonaparte (1750-1836), _née_ Ramolino, Napoleon's
mother. When Bonaparte assumed the title of Emperor, he bestowed upon
his mother that of Madame Mère and Imperial Highness.--T.
[138] Cardinal Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was Madame Mère's
half-brother.--T.
[139] Nikolaus Field-Marshal Prince Esterhazy von Galantha (1765-1833),
the Hungarian magnate who, in 1797, had organized an army in Hungary to
repel the French invasion.--T.
[140] Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (1784-1860), Napoleon's
youngest and most worthless brother, distinguished for little save his
personal courage. From Jerome the present Bonapartist pretenders are
descended. He had married a daughter of the King of Wurtemberg, who,
after Waterloo, gave him the title of Comte de Montfort. He returned
to France in 1848, and prepared the way for the election to the
Presidency of his nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, afterwards Napoleon
III. Jerome, who resumed his royal title under the Second Empire, was
successively appointed Governor of the Invalides (1848), a marshal of
France (1850), and President of the Senate (1851).--T.
[141] _Cf._ my description of the Hundred Days at Ghent, _infra,_
and the portrait of M. de Talleyrand given at the end of these
Memoirs.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1839).
[142] The full title of Chateaubriand's work was _De Bonaparte, des
Bourbons et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes pour
le bonheur de la France et celui de l'Europe._ Extracts from the famous
pamphlet were published in the _Journal des Débats_ on the 4th of April
1814, and the work itself was placed on sale the next day, Wednesday
the 5th of April.--B.
[143] Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839), was the editor of
the bulletins of the National Assembly in 1789, and thus laid the
foundations of the _Moniteur universel._ In 1792, he was sent as
Ambassador to Naples, was captured by the Austrians on the road, and
was kept in confinement until 1795, when he was exchanged for the
daughter of Louis XVI. Bonaparte appointed Maret Secretary-General to
the Consuls and later, in 1804, made him Secretary of State. In this
capacity Maret accompanied Napoleon on all his campaigns, drawing up
most of the instructions and bulletins. He was in 1811 created Duc
de Bassano, and was appointed Foreign Minister and Minister of War
in 1813. He was exiled in 1815, not returning to France until 1820.
The Duc de Bassano was a minister of Louis-Philippe for the space of
one week only (10 to 18 November 1834). To Napoleon he had been an
invaluable and indefatigable servant.--T.
[144] François Séverin Desgraviers-Marceau (1769-1796) enlisted at
the age of sixteen, became a captain in the Vendée in 1793 and, in
the same year, when only twenty-four years old, was, upon Kléber's
recommendation, appointed General-in-Chief of the Western Army. On the
12th of December, he won the bloody battle of Mans over the Vendeans.
In 1794, he was employed as a general of division in the Army of
Sambre-et-Meuse, and contributed to the victory of Fleurus. In 1796,
he protected the retreat of Jourdan's Army, and had several times
repelled the enemy when he fell mortally wounded near Altkirchen, at
the age of twenty-seven years. Marceau was noted for his humanity and
disinterestedness, as much as for his courage and strategic talent His
native city of Chartres erected a monument to him in 1850.--T.
[145] Lazare Hoche (1768-1797) received the command of the Army of
the Moselle at the age of twenty-five. In 1793-94, he cleared the
Austrians out of Alsace. He was thrown into prison for a short time,
at the instance of Pichegru, over whose head he had been promoted, but
recovered his liberty on the 9 Thermidor, and was placed at the head
of the Army of the Vendée. He defeated the Emigrants at Quiberon and
succeeded in pacifying the whole district. In 1796, he commanded the
army which was intended to effect a landing in Ireland, but was driven
back by storms. He was next, in February 1797, placed in command of the
Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, consisting of 80,000 men, and defeated the
Austrians in three engagements, but died, in September, of a complaint
of the bowels. Hoche has a statue at Versailles, where he was born.--T.
[146] Barthélemy Cathérine Joubert (1769-1799) served with great
distinction in Italy, as second to Bonaparte, in 1795 and 1796; in
1798, he himself commanded the Army of Italy and at first obtained
great successes. On the 15th of August 1799, however, he was
unexpectedly attacked by the Russians at Novi, saw his army routed, and
was mortally wounded while attempting to effect a rally. The Directory
were considering whether they should place Joubert in the supreme
power, when his death occurred.--T.
[147] Masséna routed the Russians at Zurich on the 26th of August
1799.--T.
[148] Camille Jordan (1771-1821), a moderate French citizen of liberal
opinions, and author of some wise and temperate works.--T.
[149] Louis Jean Népomucène Lemercier (1771-1840), a notable playwright
and a member of the French Academy.--T.
[150] Jean Denis Comte Lanjuinais (1753-1827), a moderate member of the
Convention, of which, after escaping from arrest, he was made President
in 1795. In 1800, he was made a senator, and, although he voted against
the life consulship, he was later created a count of the Empire. In
1814, he voted for the deposition of Napoleon and was made a peer by
Louis XVIII.--T.
[151] Charles François Lebrun, Duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), the third
of the three Consuls. Under the Empire, Bonaparte created him Duc de
Plaisance, High Treasurer, and Administrator-General of Holland. He
gave in his adhesion to the recall of the Bourbons in 1814, and was
created a peer under the Restoration.--T.
[152] Here I omit quotations from Marie Joseph de Chénier, Madame de
Staël, Benjamin Constant, Béranger, Courier, Victor Hugo, Sheridan and
Lord Byron.--T.
[153] M. de Talleyrand occupied the house which forms the corner of the
Place de la Concorde and the Rue Saint-Florentin. After the death of
the Prince de Talleyrand, it was taken by the Princesse de Lieven. It
is now the property of M. Alphonse de Rothschild.--B.
[154] The Abbé Dominique Dufour de Pradt (1759-1837), was Grand Vicar
at Rouen on the outbreak of the Revolution. He emigrated in 1791,
returned in 1801, and became successively almoner to the Emperor, a
baron, Bishop of Poitiers and Archbishop of Mechlin. In 1812, he was
sent as Ambassador to Warsaw, but acquitted himself very badly in this
capacity, and was deprived of his almoner-ship and sent back to his
diocese. He thereupon became a violent enemy of Napoleon, and was one
of the first to declare against him when the Allies entered Paris.
Nevertheless, he was coldly received by the Bourbons and obliged to
resign his archbishopric, receiving a pension of 12,000 francs by way
of indemnity. He wrote a mass of occasional matter, including a History
of his Polish Embassy. The publication referred to above is his _Récit
historique sur la restauration de la royauté en France le 31 mars_
1814.--T.
[155] Pierre de Ruel, Maréchal Marquis de Beurnonville (1752-1821), had
served in the Republican armies, was made Minister of War in 1792, but
was captured by Dumouriez and delivered to the Austrians: he was one of
the French officers exchanged in 1795 for Louis XVI.'s daughter, who
became Duchesse d'Angoulême. Under the Consulate and Empire, he was
sent as Ambassador to Berlin and Madrid. He became a senator in 1805, a
count of the Empire in 1808. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France
in 1814, a marshal of France in 1816, gave him his marquisate in 1817
and the Order of the Holy Ghost in 1820.--T.
[156] Arnail François Marquis de Jaucourt (1757-1852) was a colonel in
the royal service at the age of twenty-five. Under the Revolution, he
pronounced for the Constitutional Monarchy and was obliged to emigrate.
Napoleon made him a senator in 1803, First Chamberlain to King Joseph
in 1804, a count in 1808; and Jaucourt remained faithful until the
flight of Joseph and Marie-Louise, when he consented to join the
Provisional Government. Louis XVIII. made him a minister of State and
a peer of France; but he held office for only short periods, devoting
himself mainly to the interests of Protestantism, a form of worship to
which he belonged.--T.
[157] Emmerich Joseph Wolfgang Heribert Duc de Dalberg (1773-1833) left
the service of the Grand-duke of Baden for that of Napoleon and was
naturalized a Frenchman. He was created a duke of the Empire in 1810
and, for the rest, clung to the fortunes of Talleyrand.--T.
[158] François Xavier Marc Antoine Abbé Duc de Montesquiou-Fezensac
(1757-1832) had followed the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) to
England after the Revolution. He returned to France after the 9
Thermidor to serve the interests of the Bourbons, but was exiled
by Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. made him his Minister of the Interior
(1814-1815), and he was for some time at the head of affairs. After the
Second Restoration, he was created a peer of France (1815), a count
(1817) and a duke (1821) but took no further part in politics. In 1816,
he was admitted to the French Academy, although he had no literary
qualifications. He died in retirement and poor.--T.
[159] Dupont de Nemours (_vide_ note, _supra_, p. 56) was Secretary to
the Provisional Government, rather than a member of it.--B.
[160] The Treaty of Tilsit, between Russia and Prussia on the one hand
and France on the other, took place in 1807.--T.
[161] At the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., the house in the
Rue Saint-Florentin belonged to the Duc de Fitz-James, who sold it,
in 1787, to the Duchesse de l'Infantado. Hence the name of Hôtel de
l'Infantado by which it was generally designated under the Empire and
in the early years of the Restoration.--B.
[162] Adresse du Gouvernement provisoire aux armées françaises (2 April
1814).--B.
[163] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1544-1611), brother to the
Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, on whose death he proclaimed
himself the Head of the League and Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom,
and made war upon Henry III. and the King of Navarre (Henry IV.),
but was defeated by the latter at Arques and Ivry. He kept up his
resistance after the death of Henry III., and proclaimed a phantom king
in the person of the Cardinal de Bourbon. On the death of that Prince,
in 1590, he convoked the States-General in the hope of securing his own
election, but failed, ended by submitting and, in 1596, made his peace
with Henry IV., who made him Governor of the Isle of France.--T.
[164] Charles Comte, later Duc de Cossé-Brissac was appointed Governor
of Paris by the Duc de Mayenne in 1594. A few months later, he
surrendered the capital to Henry IV., who made him a marshal.--T.
[165] Jean Baptiste Mailhe (1754-1834), member of the Convention for
the Haute-Garonne. As the result of the drawing which took place among
the departments, he was the first called upon to vote in the trial of
the King. In 1814, he sent an address to the Senate to congratulate it
on pronouncing the deposition of Napoleon.--B.
[166] Baron Petit (1772-1856) had been Brigadier-General of the
Imperial Guard since the 23rd of June 1813. The day after the
leave-taking at Fontainebleau, he swore allegiance to Louis XVIII.,
who made him a knight of St. Louis; but he fought at Cambronne's side
at Waterloo, and protected the flight of the Emperor. Louis-Philippe
created him a peer of France in 1837, and made him Commander of the
Invalides. Napoleon III. appointed him a Senator in 1852.--T.
[167] Franz Baron von Koller (1767-1826), Adjutant-General to Prince
von Schwarzenberg, and an Austrian general of the first merit.--T.
[168] Colonel, later General Sir Neil Campbell (1776-1827). Colonel
Campbell stayed in Elba at Napoleon's request, and it was during one
of his absences in Italy that Napoleon escaped, Campbell's supposed
residence having put the English naval captains off their guard.--T.
[169] Friedrich Ludwig Count Truchsess von Waldburg (1776-1844), author
of the _Reise von Fontainebleau nach Fréjus_ (1815), from which the
following extracts are taken.--T.
[170] Johann Philipp Palm (1766-1806), the victim of this judicial
murder. A book was published at Nuremberg, in 1814, by the unfortunate
publisher's family, giving a full and touching account of his trial and
execution.--T.
[171] Friedrich von Gentz (1764-1832), a noted German publicist,
author of the Prussian manifesto against France in 1806, the Austrian
manifestoes of 1809 and 1813, the protocols of the Conferences of
Vienna (1814) and Paris (1815), and of several remarkable political
works.--T.
[172] Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), did not receive
his duchy until the 11th of May 1814. The earlier steps are: Baron
Douro and Viscount Wellington (4 September 1809), Earl of Wellington
(28 February 1812), and Marquess of Wellington (3 October 1812).--T.
[173] Paul François Charles Augereau, Maréchal Duc de Castiglione
(1757-1816), a brilliant, dashing and courageous soldier. He was one of
the first to recognise the Bourbons.--T.
[174] Henri Gratien Comte Bertrand (1773-1844), Napoleon's intimate
and confidant, accompanied him to Elba and St. Helena, and never left
his side until his death. He had been sentenced to death by contumacy
in 1816. On his return from St. Helena, in 1821, Louis XVIII. remitted
his penalty and restored him to his rank. In 1840, he accompanied the
Prince de Joinville to St. Helena and, with him, brought back the
remains of Napoleon to France. He is buried at the Invalides by the
Emperor's side.--T.
[175] Comte Drouot (1774-1847), the great artillery general. Napoleon
made him Governor of Elba. He returned to France with the Emperor at
Waterloo, and fought with extraordinary gallantry. He was proscribed by
Louis XVIII. and tried by court-martial, but acquitted. He ended his
days in retirement, and lost his sight some years before his death.
Napoleon left him 100,000 francs in his will.--T.
[176] TRUCHSESS-WALDBURG, _A Narrative of Napoleon Buonaparte's Journey
from Fontainebleau to Fréjus in April 1814_ (London: John Murray,
1816).--T.
[177] In 1799, after the capture of Jaffa, Bonaparte had the garrison
murdered in cold blood, as well as some thousands of prisoners of whom
he had a difficulty in disposing.--T
[178] According to several historians, the Marquis de Maubreuil was a
needy adventurer, as destitute of scruples as of money, who is supposed
to have been charged by Talleyrand, in April 1814, to assassinate
Napoleon. Dupont, the Minister for War, Anglès, the Minister for
Police, and Bourrienne, the Postmaster-General, the commanders of the
Russian and Austrian troops, the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of
Austria himself are said to have approved of the mission entrusted to
Maubreuil. All this is an abominable calumny.
The royalist zeal of which Maubreuil had given signs, after the entry
of the Allies into Paris, had earned for him the good graces of M.
Laborie, the assistant-secretary to the Provisional Government; but his
protector, failing to procure him a post, he invented a stroke of the
boldest character.
Under the pretext that he was going in search of a portion of the Crown
diamonds, which had been removed from Paris and were not to be found,
on the 21st of April, at the village of Fossard, near Montereau, he
waylaid the Queen of Westphalia, who was returning to Germany, and
seized eleven cases containing the Queen's jewelry and diamonds and
80,000 francs in gold. When the news of this great stroke reached
Paris, the Sovereigns, and the Emperor Alexander in particular,
displayed the liveliest annoyance and demanded the punishment of the
culprits. Maubreuil, meantime, had returned to Paris, on the night
of the 23rd of April; he carried to the Tuileries the cases which he
had taken, one of them, according to him, having been broken and its
contents scattered on the road. At the same time, he handed over four
sacks, containing gold, he said. The next day, when the cases were
opened by the locksmith who had made the keys, they were found to be
almost empty; the sacks contained silver pieces of twenty sous, instead
of gold pieces of twenty francs. The police, before long, had proofs
that the broken case, which was just that which had contained the
most precious objects, had been opened at Versailles, in a room at an
inn, by Maubreuil and his accomplice, a certain Dasies. Moreover, in
one of the apartments occupied by Maubreuil in Paris--he had three or
four--they found on the bed a magnificent diamond which had belonged to
the Queen of Westphalia. The evidences of the theft were incontestable.
Maubreuil put a bold face upon it. He declared that he had left Paris
with the mission to assassinate the Emperor; that this mission had
been given him by M. de Talleyrand; that, in spite of the horror with
which it inspired him, he had accepted it for fear lest it should be
given to another. "He had," he continued, "arranged everything to
deceive the criminal intentions of those who had employed him, and he
had sought, by bringing them a treasure and contenting their greed, to
appease their dissatisfaction." This could not stand proof; but, in the
then circumstances, those lies might have produced the most deplorable
and baleful effects among the public, particularly the soldiers. The
Government thought it the wisest course to hurry nothing, to keep the
accused in prison, and to await aid and counsel from time and the
progress of events. _Cf._ the _Souvenirs du comte de Semallé_ and Vol.
II. of the _Mémoires du chancelier Pasquier._--B.
[179] Jean Baptiste Germain Fabry (1780-1821), author of the
_Itinéraire de Buonaparte de Doulevent à Fréjus_ (1821) and of numerous
publications, written with talent and animated with a profoundly
religious and royalist spirit.--B.
[180] Sir Walter Scott, Bart (1771-1832). The above extract is taken
from his _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (1827), chap, lxxxi.--T.
[181] Philippe Paul Comte de Ségur (1786-1873), author of the _Histoire
de Napoléon et de la grande armée en 1812_ (1824), from which the above
incident is quoted.--T.
[182] Hinton was boatswain on board the _Undaunted_, which conveyed
Napoleon to Elba.--T.
[183] Louis XVIII. landed at Calais on the 24th of April 1814. He had
left France on the 22nd of June 1791.--B.
[184] Louis Pierre Louvel (1753-1820), the assassin of the Duc de Berry
(13 February 1820). He declared in one of his interrogatories that,
on the first day of the Restoration, he had sworn to exterminate all
the Bourbons and that, in April 1814, he had gone on foot from Metz to
Calais with the object of stabbing Louis XVIII.--T.
[185] Nicolas Joseph Maréchal Comte Maison (1771-1840) rallied to the
new Government and was made Governor of Paris and a peer of France
(1814). He refused to accept any post from Napoleon on the return of
the latter from Elba, and in 1817 was created a marquis. He commanded
the Morean Expedition in 1828, and was made a marshal of France in
the following year. Maison was one of the commissaries appointed to
accompany Charles X. to Cherbourg in 1830. Under Louis-Philippe he was
Ambassador to Vienna (1831-1833), to St. Petersburg (1833-1835), and
Minister of War (1835-1836).--T.
[186] Joan of Arc (1410-1430) was captured by the English on the 24th
of May 1430, on attempting a sortie from Compiègne, besieged by the
English and Burgundians. Louis XVIII. arrived at Compiègne on the 29th
of April 1814.--T.
[187] Louis XIV. (1638-1715) was the direct ancestor of Louis XVIII. in
the fifth generation (great-great-great-grandfather).--T.
[188] Étienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, Maréchal Duc de
Tarente (1765-1840), a fine soldier, of Irish descent. He was made a
peer of France, after Napoleon's abdication, and Grand Chancellor of
the Legion of Honour, a dignity which he retained until 1831.--T.
[189] Michel Ney, Maréchal Duc d'Elchingen, Prince de la Moskowa
(1769-1815), was, at the end of the next year, sentenced to be shot for
his treachery to the King, the sentence being executed on the 7th of
December 1815.--T.
[190] Bon Adrien Jeannot Moncey, Maréchal Duc de Conégliano
(1754-1842), was imprisoned for three months in 1815 at Ham for
refusing to try Marshal Ney, and excluded from the House of Peers,
to which he was not readmitted until 1819. In 1823 he was given a
command in Spain in the war of French intervention. He ended his
life as Governor of the Invalides, where he received the remains of
Napoleon.--T.
[191] Jean Marie Philippe Maréchal Comte Sérurier (1742-1819) was
Governor of the Invalides, in 1814, and burnt the flags captured from
the enemy in the court-yard to save them from being restored to the
Allies. Louis made him a peer of France and Grand Cross of St. Louis,
but he resigned all his functions in December 1815.--T.
[192] Marshal Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (1763-1815) rejoined Napoleon
on his return from Elba, and was killed by the Royalist mob at Avignon
shortly after the Battle of Waterloo.--T.
[193] Alexandre Berthier, Maréchal Prince de Wagram, Prince de
Neuchâtel (1753-1815), committed suicide on the return of Napoleon,
from the balcony of his mother-in-law, the Duke of Birkenfeld's palace
at Bamberg, during a fit of fever (1 June 1815).--T.
[194] _Cf. Compiègne, avril_ 1814 (Paris: Le Normant, 1814).--B.
[195] The musketeers of the King's Military Household, so called
because of their red uniform.--B.
[196] The manuscript of the Memoirs says forty years. Is this simply
a _lapsus calami_, or did Chateaubriand, who, it is true, was an
indifferent calculator, really reckon forty years between 1792 and
1814?--B.
[197] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) dated his reign from
1649, the year of the execution of Charles I., and not from 1660, the
year of his restoration.--T.
[198] In spite of what Chateaubriand says, it is only just to recognise
that Louis XVIII. had given proof of a truly royal dignity in not
consenting to accept the crown at the hands of the senators, and in
proclaiming that he held it in his own right. The Comte de Lille, the
exile of Hartwell, had, in fact, no other title to occupy the throne
than as the descendant of Louis XIV., the brother of Louis XVI., and
the successor of Louis XVII.--B.
[199] Chateaubriand here commits a slight error of date. The Emperor
Alexander left Paris on the 2nd of June 1814. It was not then, nor on
the eve of his departure, that he had a religious service celebrated on
the Place Louis XV. This ceremony had taken place almost immediately
after the entry of the Allies, before either the Comte d'Artois or
Louis XVIII. had arrived in Paris, on Sunday the 10th of April. On
that day, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia and Prince von
Schwarzenberg, representing the Emperor of Austria, reviewed their
respective troops, drawn up in line, to the number of 80,000 men, from
the Boulevard de l'Arsenal to the Boulevard de la Madeleine. At one
o'clock, a mass was said on the Place Louis XV. by a bishop and six
priests of the Greek rite. A _Te Deum_ was sung to thank God for giving
peace to France and the world. The Allied troops defiled before the
altar, which was surrounded by the National Guard of Paris, under the
orders of its commandant, General Dessolle.--B.
[200] Joseph Anne Auguste Maximilien de Croy, Duc d'Havré (1744-1839).
He was a brigadier-general, in 1789, when elected a deputy to the
States-General by the nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham. In
1814, Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, a lieutenant-general and
a captain of the Body-guards. He was then seventy years of age.--B.
[201] Victor Perrin, Maréchal Duc de Bellune (1766-1841), known as
Marshal Victor, had been seriously wounded in the campaign of 1814.
He remained faithful to Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days, and was
created a peer of France in 1815. He was Minister for War for a few
days under the Bourbons.--T.
[202] Philippe Louis Marie Antoine de Noailles, Prince de Poix, Duc
de Mouchy (1752-1819). His career resembled that of the Duc d'Havré
in every particular. He was sent to the States-General in 1789 by the
nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham, and was created a peer, a
lieutenant-general and a captain of the Body-guards in 1814.--B.
[203] Nicolas Charles Oudinot, Maréchal Duc de Reggio (1767-1847),
one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals, was wounded no less than
thirty-two times. Under the Restoration, to which he continued faithful
in 1815, he became a peer of France, Major-General of the Royal Guard
and Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Paris. Louis-Philippe
appointed Oudinot Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour (1839) and
Governor of the Invalides (1842).--T.
[204] THUC. III. 38.--T.
[205] Madame de Talleyrand-Périgord, _née_ Worley, was born at
Pondichéry, where her father was harbour-master. At sixteen years of
age, she married a Swiss, Mr. Grant, who lived with her successively at
Chandernagor and Calcutta; she allowed herself to be eloped with and
carried to Europe. After numerous adventures, she became Talleyrand's
mistress under the Directory and lived with him publicly. The First
Consul ordered his minister to marry her, which was done, after
Talleyrand had received a brief from the Court of Rome releasing him
from his vows, and after Mr. Grant, then in Paris, had agreed to a
divorce, in consideration of a large sum of money and a good place...
at the Cape of Good Hope. The marriage of the ex-Bishop of Autun was,
for that matter, a purely civil one. When the Restoration came, he
settled a pension of 60,000 francs on his wife, on condition that she
went to live in England.--B.
[206] François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) became Minister
of the Interior in 1830, under Louis-Philippe, was French Ambassador
to England for a few months in 1840, and Prime Minister from 1840 to
1848.--T.
[207] Pierre Victor Baron Malouet (1740-1814) served in the Admiralty
all his life: under Louis XVI.; as Commissary-general of Marine under
Bonaparte; and as Minister of Marine under the Restoration.--T.
[208] Jacques Claude Comte Beugnot (1761-1835) had, under the Empire,
been Prefect of Rouen, a councillor of State, Minister of Finance to
King Jerome, and Prefect of Lille. Louis XVIII. made him Minister of
Marine in December 1814. He accompanied the King to Ghent and, on the
return, became Postmaster-general. He was made a peer of France in
1730.--B.
[209] Pierre Antoine Comte Dupont de L'Étang (1765-1840), had been one
of the most brilliant generals of the Empire, but was cashiered for
his capitulation at Baylen (1808), and kept in prison until 1814. He
remained only a few months at the War Office. In 1836, Dupont published
a translation in verse of the Odes of Horace and, in 1839, the _Art de
la guerre_, a poem in ten cantos.--T.
[210] Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Maréchal Duc de Dalmatie (1769-1852),
Napoleon's greatest tactician. He became Major-general of Napoleon's
army during the Hundred Days, and was exiled by the Bourbons at the
Second Restoration; returned to France in 1819, and was raised to
the peerage, in 1827, by Charles X. But, in 1830, he devoted himself
to Louis-Philippe; became Minister of War and President of the
Council; reorganized the French Army in 1832; represented France at
the coronation of Victoria in 1838, and received a veritable ovation
in England. In 1839 and again in 1840, Soult resumed the office of
Minister of War, together with the Presidency of the Council; but was
obliged by the state of his health to resign, in 1847, and received the
quite exceptional title of Marshal-General, which only Turenne, Villars
and Saxe had borne before him.--T.
[211] Pierre Louis Casimir Duc de Blacas d'Aulps (1770-1839)
accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, was created a peer under the Second
Restoration, and Ambassador to Naples and later to Rome. In 1823,
he was reappointed to Naples, where he remained till 1830, when he
followed the Bourbons into exile, dying at Prague in 1839.--T.
[212] Jules Jean Baptiste Comte Anglès (1778-1828). He again became
Prefect of Police in 1818, and retained that post until 1821.--B.
[213] Charles Dambray (1760-1829) was made Chancellor, Minister of
Justice and President of the Chamber in 1814. He took refuge in England
during the Hundred Days, and resumed the presidency of the Chamber on
his return.--T.
[214] Joseph Dominique Baron Louis (1755-1837) had taken orders
and assisted as deacon to the Bishop of Autun at the Feast of the
Federation in 1790. He emigrated, nevertheless, and employed his exile
in studying the financial system of England. He was several times
Minister of Finance: in 1814, 1816, 1818 and 1831.--T.
[215] Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823), the famous
"Organizer of Victory." He became Minister of the Interior during the
Hundred Days, and was exiled during the Second Restoration, retiring
first to Warsaw and next to Magdeburg, where he died. He was the author
of several works, including the _Mémoire adressé au roi en juillet
1814_, the letter in question.--T.
[216] _Réflexions politiques sur quelques écrits du jour et sur
les intérêts de tous les Français_ (December 1814). This is one of
Chateaubriand's finest writings.--B.
[217] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein, Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835), became
Minister of the Interior in 1816, a member of the French Academy in the
same year, and a viscount and peer of France in 1823.--T.
[218] Claire Duchesse de Duras (1777-1829), _née_ de Coëtnempren de
Kersaint, married in 1797, in England, Amédée Bretagne Malo de Durfort,
who, three years later, on the death of his father, became Duc de
Duras. On the return of the Bourbons, the Duc de Duras was made a peer
of France and First Lord of the Bed-chamber. The duchess at that time
had one of the most popular salons in Paris. She wrote several little
novels: _Édouard, Ourika, Frère Ange, Olivier_, and the _Mémoires
de Sophie_, of which the two first were published in 1820 and 1824
respectively; the other three are still in manuscript. Towards the
end of her life, the Duchesse de Duras wrote some eminently Christian
pages, which were published, ten years after her death, in 1839, under
the title of _Réflexions et prières inédites._--B.
[219] Claire Louise Augustine Félicité Magloire de Durfort (_b._
1798), known as Félicie, married, first (1813), Charles Léopold Henri
de La Trémoille, Prince de Talmont (_d._ 1815), and, secondly (1819),
Brigadier-general Auguste du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejacquelein.--B.
[220] Claire Henriette Philippine Benjamine de Durfort (1799-1863),
known as Clara, married (1819) Henri Louis Comte de Chastellux, created
Duc de Rauzan on the occasion of his marriage.--B.
[221] In January 1829.--B.
[222] Madame Julie Récamier (1777-1849), _née_ Bernard, of whom much
will be read in the sequel, was very intimate with Madame de Staël,
and had been banished from Paris by Napoleon for the frequency of her
visits to Madame de Staël at Coppet.--T.
[223] The old Cemetière de la Madeleine, at No. 48, Rue
d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré.--B.
[224] Pierre François Fontaine (1762-1865), an eminent modern French
architect and member of the Academy of Arts, who, together with
Percier, _quem vide infra_, constructed the Expiatory Chapel at the
corner of the Rue d'Anjou and the Boulevard Haussmann, mentioned below,
and a number of other public works, including the great staircase at
the Louvre, the restorations at Versailles, etc.--T
[225] Charles Percier (1764-1840), member of the Institute, and
Fontaine's friend and collaborator.--T.
[226] _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 157.--T.
[227] The Oriflamme, which, under the Capets, became the standard
of France, was originally the private banner of the Abbey of
Saint-Denis.--T.
[228] The tombs of the Kings at Saint-Denis were opened in 1793, by
order of the Convention (6 August), and restored, together with the
church, by Napoleon, in 1806.--T.
[229] Chateaubriand: _Le Vingt-et-un janvier_ (Paris: Le Normant,
1815).--B.
[230] The service in memory of the martyrdom of King Charles I. was
struck out of the Prayer-book in the year 1859.--T.
[230b] M. Descloseaux (not Ducluzeau, as the previous editions of the
Memoirs have it) was a faithful Royalist, who had become the proprietor
of the old Cemetière de la Madeleine to save the remains of the King
and Queen from profanation.--B.