Montebello's sons. The ceremony was performed after the Italian fashion
in a drawing-room belonging to the Prince of Salerno, himself a
thorough Neapolitan, with his wit and exaggerated drolleries, and the
uproar he made and caused wherever he betook himself. This same uproar
had already terrified the baby, when out of a sort of cupboard chapel a
worthy chaplain, an old friend of my mother's, Monsignore Corbi, was
seen to advance. The monsignore, who was exceedingly ugly, and very
short in stature, had a huge mitre on his head, and looked so
diabolical altogether that the child writhed in terror at the sight,
and screamed in the most unearthly manner, while to quiet it the
dignitary yelled in a squeaky voice, Bello, bello! ("Pretty, pretty!"),
which only terrified it all the more.
On our way back from Naples we were caught in a violent gale outside
the Straits of Bonifacio, which did some damage to the ship and
demoralised the ladies. In consequence of this, instead of going
straight to Marseilles, where a brilliant reception was awaiting the
Duchesse d'Aumale, we put in at Toulon. There the Duchesse landed and
went on to Marseilles by land, while I went round by sea.
But this did not suit the official masters of the ceremonies, and put
out all their preparations for an ovation. The arrival had been planned
to be by sea, and by sea it must be, or everything would be spoilt. So
the poor Duchesse was taken quietly by a roundabout road to the old wet
dock, where she was put on board, and after a slight detour, she
arrived in approved nautical fashion, and disembarked at the foot of
the Cannebiere "amidst a scene of indescribable enthusiasm," as the
official descriptions would say.
The only recollections I have of those Marseilles fetes are musical
ones. First of all that of King Rene's band, with tabour, pipes, and
tambourines, escorting the "prud' hommes" fishermen dressed in Henri
Quatre costumes. And secondly, that of a violoncello solo, admirably
played by Offenbach, who was then quite young, and a musician in heart
and soul, but who had not yet shown his great talent as a composer.
I tore myself, however, from all these rejoicings, which bored me very
much, to go and see the haven of Bouc, the Martigues, and the pool of
Berre, where but very little is required to complete a matchless piece
of Nature's work and turn it into the finest port in the whole world I
was deeply interested in all I saw, in company with Admiral Baudin and
engineers, both military and naval, who had brought all the plans with
them. But our trade still goes to Marseilles and our warships to
Toulon, and the two habits have taken such deep root that it is
hopeless to fight against them. And the conclusion we came to was that,
save as regarded deepening the entrance to the haven of Bouc (which has
since been done), matters were not likely to alter to any very great
extent. I seem yet to hear a young engineer des ponts et chaussees, who
was a member of our party, grumbling between his teeth, as he rolled up
his plans, that there were a good many other things in Provence that
nobody could alter--notably the purity of outline of the Arlesian
girls. He pronounced purete badly, and it sounded like durete. He may
have done it out of mischief, for when he looked at me he burst out
laughing.
All this coming and going between Morocco and Naples had kept me far
away enough from Paris and the battlefield of politics. When I got
back, in the winter of 1845, the July Monarchy had still three years of
life before it, but an odour of sickliness hung about it already.
The St. Vitus's dance of parliamentary politics gave no satisfaction to
anybody except the Jerome-Paturots, to whom it gave a social standing.
But how many envious individuals were there to every one who was
content? Parliament gave no strength then to the Government, which was
the object of almost unanimous attack on the part of the Press; and, by
a strange contradiction, the chief reproach cast at an order of things
which every one was striving to discredit and overthrow was its want of
energy. How often, since that time, have I heard that cry "Be strong,"
which is the invariable death-knell of governments in extremities!
While the love of destruction--which is the essence of the
revolutionary spirit, aided by democratic jealousies, and political
speculators--was openly pursuing its destructive work, unopposed and
unfettered save by empty verbiage and futile restrictions, the healthy
appearance of the daily social life of the capital seemed unchanged.
The peaceful regime of 1830, which had been fortunate enough to endow
France with her first railways, and which was extending them with wise
activity, was soon to see the dawn of one of the most fruitful
discoveries in science--the electric telegraph, the first practical
application of which dates from 1845. The fine arts shone brilliantly
under the encouragement of an enlightened ruler. Eugene Delacroix sent
splendid canvases, the Entree des Croises a Constantinople, among
others, to the Versailles Museum, the generous and personal creation of
King Louis Philippe. Meissonier's masterpieces were spreading his
reputation far and wide, and near him clustered a swarm of great
landscape painters--Corot, Jules Dupre, Rousseau, Troyon. Henriquel
Dupont, that prince of engravers, was sending out wonderful proofs,
such as Gustavus Vasa and the Hemicycle. And what actors there were on
the boards! Not to mention the Theatre Italieri, with that incomparable
trio Grisi, Lablache, and Mario--Parisians by adoption--and then in the
heyday of their talent; the Francais, the Porte-Saint-Martin, and the
Gymnase, all offered us representations which approached very nearly to
perfection.
The recollection of Le Menteur, as played in the Tuileries Theatre by
Firmin, Samson, and Regnier, with Mdmes. Plessy, Anai's, and Augustine
Brohan, is constantly with me. At the Porte-Saint-Martin were Frederic
Lemaltre and Madame Dorval, startling in their poignant truthfulness
and dramatic power in that terrible drama Trente Ans, oil la Vie d'un
Joueur. And at the Gymnase we had Rose Cheri.
If I talk so much about theatres, it must be remembered that the
theatre is one of our glories. What other country has a Comedie
Franchise--an institution two centuries old, miraculously respected, so
far, amidst all our ruins, by the hammer of the revolutionary destroyer.
I talk of theatres, too, because I spent many an evening in them. The
rest passed peacefully away in the "family drawing-room," which well
deserved its name, for we all met there, old and young, big and little,
after the evening meal, which was always partaken of in common.
In that drawing-room, on the first floor of the Tuileries, between the
Pavilion de Flore and the Pavilion de l'Horloge, my mother used to sit
doing her fancy work at a round table lighted by shaded candles, with
my aunt Adelaide, the young princesses, and the ladies-in-waiting near
her. The King sat on a window seat in the billiard-room adjoining the
drawing-room, and there received the despatches brought him by his
secretary, Baron Fain, and read the Times, the only newspaper he was in
the habit of reading daily. It was there the gentlemen visitors,
chiefly diplomats, who wanted to speak to him, joined him; while the
lady visitors sat round the Queen's table, at which the conversation
was general, if occasionally soporific. It used to brighten up again
with the arrival of any ladies whose wit or beauty attracted the men
who had scattered about the drawing-room. This was always the case on
the appearance of Mesdames de St. Aulaire and de Castellane, of some
charming members of the corps diplomatique, the Princess de Ligne,
Mesdames Firmin Rogier and de Stockhausen, or again of three sisters,
daughters of M. de Laborde, Mesdames Delessert, Bocher, and Odier.
Three magnificent Englishwomen, the Sheridan sisters, had formerly
caused a great sensation. Now it was the turn of Princesse Mathilde,
then at the height of her beauty; and there were many others besides.
Among the gentlemen, a strong contingent of our visitors was furnished
by the foreigners passing through Paris--Prince Paul of Wurtemberg,
Prince Max of Bavaria, Prince Paul Esterhazy. Amongst the English were
Disraeli, Bear Ellis, Charles Fox, Monckton Milnes, &c., &c. There were
numbers of Spaniards. Sometimes M. von Humboldt would give us a
reading, not invariably amusing. However, to make up for that, I have
heard Prince Belgiojoso, the husband of the beautiful deep-eyed
Trivulce, sing, with a voice that was exquisite. But the catalogue of
visitors would be an endless one. Yet I cannot pass on without
mentioning among our most constant habitues, at that time Marshal
Sebastiani, one of a circle of intimate friends presided over by my
aunt Adelaide.
This little gathering, of which M. de Talleyrand had been an assiduous
member, and where Marshal Gerard, M. Dupin, Flahaut, a certain General
de Lavcestine (who downright toadied my aunt, her valet de chambre, and
her very parrot), and a few other faithful friends were in the habit of
meeting, took place in the morning, in that charming set of rooms on
the ground-floor of the Pavilion de Flore, the windows of which looked
on the corner of the Pont Royal and on the gate into the Tuileries
gardens. From these windows the quaintest sights were to be seen, not
the least entertaining of which were the Homeric struggles of the
sentries of the National Guard, absolute slaves to their orders, to
prevent dogs which were not led by a string from following their owners
into the Tuileries gardens, in which struggles the bold city guard, in
spite of prodigies of valour, not unfrequently got beaten.
My good aunt Adelaide started, towards springtime in 1845, to pay her
first visit to an estate she owned at Arc-en-Barrois, in the
Haute-Marne, and as she intended leaving it to me in her will she took
me with her. The property in question, originally belonging to Vitry,
the Captain of the Guard under Louis XIII., who killed the Marechal
d'Ancre, had afterwards passed into the hands of the Penthievre family,
and then into the possession of mine, like all the rest of the
Penthievre inheritance. My great-grandfather, the Due de Penthievre,
had lived there a good deal in a fine house, which was of course
plundered and destroyed during the Revolution, notwithstanding the fact
that the good prince had done a great deal of good in that country,
where his name is still venerated.
All the local authorities flocked around to pay their respects on the
occasion of that first visit, and amongst others the prefect of the
department, M. Romieu, who had made himself some celebrity in his youth
by reason of a variety of carnival pranks performed in the company of a
well-known band of boon companions. I recollect them perfectly well.
Among them was Lord Henry Seymour, who paraded the boulevards,
surrounded by ladies in the most elegant costumes, in a carriage and
four, with powdered and beribboned postilions, stopping at the public
squares to harangue the crowd in flowery language, to delighted shouts
of Vive milord l'Arsouille! (Long live the blackguard lord!). And then
there was another Englishman, Lord Clanricarde, the most inimitable of
Pierrots, in a black skull-cap, with his melancholy face whitened,
playing a series of nocturnal jokes, with the roof of a fiacre for his
platform. Count d'Alton, too, M. de Chateauvillard, and others, were
the authors of all kinds of witty fooling. Romieu's best-known exploit
was his having laid a friend, who had been indulging too freely, one
fine night, in the middle of the street, with a lighted lantern laid on
his chest to save him from being run over.
But our prefect was not fond of that particular story, for I remember a
very indirect allusion to it which I was unlucky enough to make in
familiar conversation, during a shooting-party, at which he appeared in
a blue blouse and leather cap, was strongly resented by him. Drawing
himself up, he thus apostrophised me:
"I beg your Royal Highness will give me credit for being a very serious
prefect."
I took the hint, and only talked to him about the damage done by
cockchafers, and the difficulty of getting hard enough stone for the
macadam roads, thenceforward. The poor gentleman, after having played a
certain part in the reaction after the Revolution of 1848, by the
publication of a sensational pamphlet entitled Le Spectre Rouge, died
of grief at the death of a son who was killed at Sevastopol.
I was obliged to make a cure at Vichy during the summer, the successive
fevers I had suffered from in hot climates having affected my liver.
For this purpose I went to the Chateau de Randan, where I endured cruel
anguish of mind, for my daughter fell dangerously ill. She made a happy
recovery, thanks to the care of a young military doctor, at once a
clever physician and one of the kindest of men, named Alphonse
Pasquier. He was murdered by the Communards after the siege of Paris.
From Randan I went to Eu, for a second visit from Queen Victoria, which
was favoured by splendid weather, and was as simple and affectionate in
its nature as her first.
The year 1845 came to an end, and the first recollection that comes
back to me in 1846 is that of a hunting-party, which was marked by a
fresh attempt on my father's life. It was on the 15th of August. We
were all at Fontainebleau, whither the King was fond of going, to watch
the progress of the splendid restoration of the galleries of Francis
the First and Henri II., which he was having carried out. I was
boar-hunting that day with Henri Greffulhe's pack.
During a check we had met the King, who had got out of his carriage at
the cross roads at the Monts de Fays and was amusing himself in a
somewhat Yankee fashion of his by whittling small sticks with his
penknife.
"The quarry is over there, away in the country," he said with the
chaffing air he always took on when there was any question of hunting,
which he detested. He had a way, when the sport was mentioned before
him, of defining it thus:
"A nice sort of amusement, indeed! I used to hunt once upon a time, to
please my father! You get fifty horsemen together. Everybody is got up
in the smartest style. First of all there is a general kicking of
horses all round. All at once somebody shouts 'Found!' and in one
minute every soul is covered with mud from head to foot. You tear along
as hard as your horse can go for two hours without seeing a single
thing. Then there is another whoop, and every soul goes home completely
knocked up--a very fine amusement indeed!"
We left the King to his little sticks, we killed our boar, and we were
on our way home, when, as we were going down the hill from Franchard, a
Hussar officer came galloping up to us, and called out:
"The King has been fired at. He's not hit."
If Providence ever watched over a man it did so that day. The would-be
assassin, Lecomte, a royal forester who had resigned his place, angry
because he had not been given the capital sum producing his pension,
instead of the pension itself, of which he was in receipt, and
overexcited as well by the calumny, abuse, attacks, and threats of all
kinds with which the daily press overwhelmed the King, had determined
to kill his Majesty.
He was an excellent shot, and he went and built himself a platform
behind the wall of the Parquet d'Avon, by which he knew the King's char
a banes must pass. When the carriage went by, at a slow trot, ten paces
from his ambush, he rested his rifle on the wall, and fired. But at the
very instant of the crime his hand must have trembled, for nobody was
touched, neither the orderly officer on duty, Captain Brahaut, who was
riding between the King and the wall, nor Montalivet, who was sitting
talking to my father, on the front seat of the carriage, nor my mother,
the Duchesse de Nemours, my aunt Adelaide, and the Prince and Princess
of Salerno, who were on the other seats. All the bullet did was to cut
the fringe of a sort of awning, which covered the carriage, just above
the King's head.
At the sound of the shot, the intended effect of which nobody mistook,
the two orderly officers, Brahaut and de Labadie, followed by Colonel
Berryer, and several Hussar officers who were in attendance on the
royal party, dashed off at a gallop to surround the enclosure, before
Lecomte could escape from it. At the same moment, one of the grooms
named Millet, who had brought his horse up against the wall, and stood
up on his saddle, saw the assassin making off. He sprang boldly after
him, and had a fearful struggle with him till the officers came up to
his assistance.
When I got back to my father and the Princesses, I found them much
distressed at this fresh attempt at regicide, but calm and
self-possessed to an extent which was far from being my own case. So
true is it that our sharpest anxieties are caused by the suffering, and
dangers of those we love!
About this period I was restored to active duty, being called to
command our evolutionary squadron in the Mediterranean. During the two
years' duration of this command, I only had to follow in the footsteps
of my predecessors, so far as the organisation and instruction of the
ships' crews were concerned, and the maintenance of that spirit of
discipline, devotion, and obedience to superiors which still
constitutes their chief excellence.
But a new duty was cast upon me by the addition, now made for the first
time, of a certain number of steamships to the squadron. I had sailed
already with several squadrons. Whatever the number of ships composing
them, the manoeuvring of the vessels and their tactics, both in sailing
and in action, all depended on one and the same element for all
alike--viz., the strength and direction of the wind And these tactics,
which were the result of centuries of experience, we all of us had put
into practice, and we had them at the tips of our fingers. We knew them
as well as our catechism, in fact. But this new art of simultaneously
navigating ships for whom the laws of wind did not exist, and which
could move in any direction, and with great swiftness, according to the
will and fancy of their captains, without allowing them to collide, was
in its earliest infancy.
My duty then was to make experiments, so as to begin to regulate this
new form of navigation. At once I set about making numerous test
manoeuvres, drawing on the tactics of the ancient galleys, and also on
cavalry movements, at the slow march and at the gallop, for my
inspiration. Then we tried towing in every form. First of all we
harnessed a steamboat to every two warships. In the second year of my
command each floating citadel had her own "spare horse." From that time
out calms and light breezes were vanquished, and the celerity of naval
operations correspondingly increased. Yet, the more we tried it, the
more obviously did the dangers and difficulties caused, especially at
night, by fastening two ships together, one of whom is necessarily a
passive agent, stare us in the face. The union of the tug and the
"towed" was not far distant. The advent of the war steamer, the swift
battleship, independent alike of wind and sea, was close at hand.
The creation of such a ship had preoccupied M. Dupuy de Lome for a long
time past. He had gone to England to see and study everything
there--both in the State dockyards and the building yards at Liverpool
and on the Clyde. We had often talked the whole thing over together,
and our views on the subject were in perfect agreement. At last, during
an interval of leave from my command, he came to me one morning with a
great roll containing two complete designs under his arm. The first for
an armed frigate, BUILT ENTIRELY OF IRON, the second for a wooden line
of battle ship--both to be exceedingly swift. The first design, for the
iron frigate, was Dupuy de Lome's pet scheme.
"Iron-built ships will be the ships of the future," he used to say, and
he was quite right.
But the experiments we had been making at Lorient upon iron plates had
been disastrous. The damage done by oblique firing on them was
terrible. Experiments were indeed being made at the same time, with a
view to armour-plating the hulls of ships, but all that was still in
the dimmest and mistiest future. How were we ever to induce naval
committees, as timid as they were, undoubtedly, all powerful, to assent
to the building of a steam frigate every single detail about which was
to be new and improved?
"The very utmost we shall get," said I to Dupuy, "will be leave to
build your wooden ship. The introduction of the submerged steam
propeller will be their concession to the innovators, and the
old-fashioned wooden hull and spars and gundecks will satisfy the
supporters of the old traditions."
"Very well," he replied, "I'll go and propose my wooden ship."
He did, and he failed. They gave him plenty of smooth words and
compliments, but refused to order his ship to be put on the stocks. The
poor fellow came back to me in despair, and we were mingling our
sorrows, and casting about as to how we had better return to the
charge, when a lucky ministerial crisis threw the Ministry for Naval
Affairs, ad interim, into the hands of M. Guizot. There we saw our
chance.
I want to see him and told him all our story--explaining to him how a
real and material step in naval progress was being adjourned on mere
questions of form; and how the outgoing minister had not dared, in
spite of his own good-will, to shake himself free of administrative
procrastination in this particular.
M. Guizot heard me out, and then asked me what had better be done.
"Why, simply take your own line, and the whole navy will applaud you.
You have full right to do it, so pray sign an order to put a steamship
after M. Dupuy de Lome's designs on the stocks."
He did it, forthwith, and that step gained, our first war steamer was
at once begun. Though Dupuy had a right to all the honours of
paternity, I might have claimed those of the ship's godfather. But she
was still unnamed when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, and christened
her le 24 Fevner, which name was swiftly exchanged for that of
Napoleon--a notion that makes me laugh even yet.
I must now return to my personal recollections of my command, which
began, as usual, with a sojourn at the Salins d'Hyeres, to knock the
crews into shape a bit. Thence I was expected to take the squadron to
Tunis, thus following the usual custom.
These two anchorages, Hyeres and Tunis, had been for a considerable
period the only ports in which the squadron was allowed to lie. It
oscillated between the two; a most tiresome bit of navigation it was.
In the open roads at Tunis, too, we could only lie and roll, a long way
from shore, with no possibility of giving our crews any relaxation
whatsoever. I do not hesitate to say that I objected to being tied to
this rigorously circumscribed field of operations, beyond which it
looked as if we dared not go.
"Crews," said I to the minister, "are like schoolboys. If you want them
to work well you must divert their minds, and give them something to
think about and look at. Give me leave to fight ennui, and the
despondency it brings with it, by taking the squadron about, showing
fresh ground to my young fellows, and taking them into ports where I
shall be able to send them ashore to amuse themselves, and thus break
the enervating monotony of life on board ship."
I gained my point, and we went first of all to the Golfe Jouan. Will it
be believed that our squadrons never went near that excellent anchorage
and lovely spot? They used to be at the Islands of Hyeres. They used to
go out to drill in the open sea, and every Saturday they went straight
back to those same islands, so as to let the married men in the
squadron get back to Toulon to their family duties on the Sunday. I was
the first admiral to break through this rule.
The Golfe Jouan and Cannes, and all that lovely country, were not at
that time what they now are. There was only one single villa at Cannes,
the Villa Eleonore, built by Lord Brougham, the Christopher Columbus of
the locality. He always came to the Tuileries on his way backwards and
forwards between his villa and England; and he invariably sang the
praises of that exquisite coast to us. One evening he made a sketch of
his villa for my mother, which I still possess.
The only gaieties at Cannes in those days consisted in village
festivals, which are known in Provence as Romerages, the equivalent of
the Pardons in Brittany. People went to them on foot, there not being a
carriage in the country I remember I went to the Romerage at Valauris.
The little Provencales in their short petticoats and brown stockings,
and their broad-brimmed black hats, enjoyed themselves to their hearts'
content in the shade to the sound of the galoubet, while my eyes
wandered between the umbrella pines across the wide sea horizon, of
that lapis-blue peculiar to the Mediterranean. It was more primitive
then than it is nowadays, but not a whit less lovely.
From Cannes we were obliged to go to Tunis, but we put in, on our way,
at the Balearic Islands, and at Palma in Majorca, where the Spanish
authorities gave us an excellent reception, and granted me permission,
with the best of grace, to practise some very interesting
disembarkation drill. The captain-general who authorised me to do this
bore the name of Tacon, and had received the title of Duqtie de la
Union de Cuba in recognition of the services he had rendered as
governor-general in that island.
He was a very superior man, under whose most enlightened, but at the
same time most absolute, of governments, the colony rose to the highest
degree of prosperity. Some difficulties with the Home Government had
led to his recall, and he was at Majorca in a state of semi-disgrace.
No longer a young man, he wore a wig of the deepest black, which, so
local tradition affirmed, was made out of the hair of a lady friend
whom he had had shaved in a fit of jealousy.
The King of Aragon, Don Jaime, is buried in the fine cathedral of Palma
His body rests in the sacristy, in the drawer of a kind of press, in
which I saw it lying, while one of the canons, to impress me with a
sense of its perfect preservation, drummed with his fingers on the
stomach of the corpse!
On our way to the Balearic Islands we fulfilled a pious duty. After the
unhappy capitulation of Baylen and its shameful violation, our
unfortunate soldiers, victims of this piece of weakness and disloyalty,
were cast upon an island called Cabrera, a bare and desert spot, where
most of them died of hunger, abandoned and forgotten by the whole
world. Having heard that their bones were lying scattered about
unburied on the isle, I had them laid in consecrated soil, and over
them, through the agency of our consul, M. Cabarrus, we raised a
monument, subscribed for by the whole squadron, with this inscription:
TO THE MEMORY OF THE FRENCH SOLDIERS WHO DIED AT CABRERA.
ERECTED BY THE EVOLUTIONARY SQUADRON, 1847.
We made a short stay at the inevitable Tunis, and left it under a
shower of presents, from the Order of the Nicham in diamonds to six
thousand dozens of eggs. But the shortness in duration of our visit was
new, and requires some explanation.
One of our first cares, after the completion of our conquest of
Algeria, had been to insure tranquillity on its Moorish frontier to the
west, and its Tunisian boundary on the east. On the Morocco side we had
been forced to have recourse to heavy ordnance for this purpose. On the
Tunisian frontier, where the population is both less fanatical and less
warlike, we had followed a different course of procedure. We had gained
the Bey's friendship by promising to support his power against the
Forte's claim to suzerainty over him. Still, year after year the Sultan
made as though he were fitting out a naval force to send to Tripoli and
exercise this same suzerainty by deposing the Bey; and every year our
squadron used to proceed to Tunis, and stay there wasting its time
while the Turkish ministry and those diplomats who were hostile to our
influence amused themselves by waving the Capitan Pasha's attack before
us like a scarecrow.
This annual repetition of a sham attack by the Turkish fleet and of the
sudden despatch of our squadron, and its subsequent spell of idleness
in Tunisian waters, had degenerated into a farce in which the
ridiculous part fell to our share. So that when I took over the command
of the squadron, with the prospect of seeing it undergo the same course
of humbug again, I could not resist making some representations on the
subject to M. Guizot, a resolute and large-minded man, as solicitous
for his country's honour as for his own. That very year, as it
happened, the Bey of Tunis had had to complain of intrigues and
disturbances stirred up on his eastern frontier by the Turkish pasha,
who was governor of Tripoli.
"Instead of leaving the squadron to dance attendance at Tunis," I said
to M. Guizot, "send it to Tripoli. Its appearance will cause surprise,
for foreign powers never send their squadrons there. I will pay a visit
to the pasha, and speak to him very plainly. The characters in the play
will change hands, and I fancy we shall be rid of all this
Turko-Diplomatic teasing about Tunis for the future."
M. Guizot approved my view. I was given secret orders to go to Tripoli,
and we left Tunis, to the delight of the whole squadron.
Long before the coast of Tripoli is in sight, its whereabouts is
denoted by the gloomy red reflection it casts upon the sky. Soon a few
clumps of date-palms seem to rise out of the water, and at last a
dreary strip of land appears, the uniform straightness of which is
broken only by the mass of white houses and terraces, the minarets and
fortifications, of the town of Tripoli. A few reefs form a far from
safe anchorage, fit for small craft only, and remarkable for the
extraordinary clearness of the water in it. The smallest details of
submarine life are easily followed in a depth of ten to twelve fathoms.
Our ships, which all drew a great deal of water, had to anchor at sea,
opposite the town, tossed about on the swell from a storm somewhere to
the north, which did not actually reach them. Our sudden, unexpected,
and very unusual apparition made a certain sensation both at the
consulates and in the pasha's palace, and all sorts of people hastened
on board, very civil all of them, but also very anxious to know the
meaning of the visit of a complete naval squadron. The pasha's deputy
presented himself with a flood of the honeyed expressions demanded by
Oriental politeness, accompanied by the classical diffa. He did not
bring us six thousand dozens of eggs, like the Tunis people; indeed
they would have been hard to get, I think, in that little favoured
spot, but he brought a very respectable contingent of cackling hens and
of very sea-sick sheep. Our acceptance of these creatures, an earnest
of our pacific intentions, gave him evident satisfaction, and I caused
him to be told that I should ask for an interview with his master,
through our consul.
I set forth, as soon as the said interview had been arranged, with a
large number of officers. The streets through which we had to pass were
narrow, dirty, and wretched-looking, and did not give one at all the
idea of belonging to a town enriched by the commerce of Fezzan and of
Central Africa, of which commerce Tripoli is the chief emporium. They
were crowded, as we passed along, by curious lookers on, consisting
principally of the three thousand idlers who formed the garrison,
Albanian Arnauts most of them, splendid fellows, blue-eyed, with long
fair moustaches, dressed in the fustanella and the rest of the
picturesque palikare costume. I will not go so far as to say the
glances they cast at us were absolutely friendly, but they were
perfectly well behaved.
We climbed up numerous staircases to the pasha's house or Konak, and
were shown into a huge apartment that was almostlike the open air, with
large windows looking on the sea, which admitted a cool refreshing
breeze. The pasha made me sit down beside him on a wide divan, and
after the usual interchange of compliments, pipes, coffee, and
preserves were ceremoniously handed round by numerous servants.
These preliminaries over, I desired the dragoman to request the pasha's
earnest attention to what I was about to say to him. Immediately there
was a general silence, all our officers, who filled one half of the
room, and all the Turkish officers and secretaries, who filled the
other half, pricked up their ears. My speech was very short.
We had come to Tripoli, I said, to salute the representative of our
ancient ally, the Sultan of Turkey. But it was ESSENTIAL, if this
friendship was to be undisturbed, that no act of hostility, direct or
indirect, should be committed against the Bey of Tunis, who was also
our ally, and that nothing should occur on either side to compromise
friendly relations. We had just been impressing this fact at Tunis, and
had come to clo the same thing at Tripoli. The perfectly amicable
nature of our visit proved the value we set on maintaining friendly
relations between the two Regencies, and therefore between France and
the Sultan's Government.
I said no more. When I ceased speaking, the pasha, who, I need scarcely
say, had preserved the most Oriental imperturbability of countenance
during my oration, bowed to me, with his hand on his breast, looking
fixedly at me the while. He had understood me; and I thought I saw a
look of relief flash across his face. It may be that his conscience had
made him fear worse things. He sent a vessel to Malta with despatches
for Constantinople. I gave an account of my proceedings to M. Guizot,
and also informed our ambassador to the Porte, M. de Bourqueney; but we
never had to do sentry duty at Tunis again.
I put to sea at once with the squadron. The tiresome thing about our
visit to Tripoli was the quarantine it entailed on us when we got back
to civilised coasts. With the object of utilising the period of our
enforced sequestration, I requested the governor of Malta to put health
officers on board us, and to allow me to count the ten days I proposed
spending under their surveillance, cruising about within sight of the
island, as quarantine.
This arrangement was accepted by the English authorities, with their
usual friendliness and practical good sense. The ten days were spent in
drill and manoeuvres of all sorts; and then the squadron went to seek
relaxation on the coasts of Sicily and Naples.
We made most agreeable stays in the ports of Syracuse, Augusta, and
Messina, before going to Naples. I took advantage of them to gratify my
passion for mountaineering, and made the ascent of Etna, to the
description of which by Alexandre Dumas I refer my readers.
When we reached the summit, during the night, we saw the immense crater
at our feet, several thousand yards round, full of fire and smoke, out
of which huge stone monoliths towered, of every shade of colour, black
and green and red and yellow. Then the rising sun fell on us, leaving
all the horizon around us in darkness, and when at last its light had
spread everywhere, save on the giant shadow of the mountain itself, we
saw all Sicily and Calabria lying at our feet like a great map, with
the blue sea surrounding it on every side. It was a grand and striking
spectacle.
We descended the mountain rapidly, ten yards at a jump, down the
crumbly pumice slopes of the Val de Bove, to Giarre, where one of the
steamers of the squadron was to take us on board; and while we waited
for her we took a delicious sea bath. We swam out to meet the ship, and
I was much tickled by the astonishment of the commander, enthroned upon
his bridge, when he heard himself hailed out of the sea by a well-known
voice, telling him to stop.
The squadron happened to be at Messina on the 15th of August, the day
of the Barra Festival, which takes place in honour both of the
Assumption of the Virgin and of the entry of Count Roger into Messina,
after he had defeated the Saracens. As far as concerned beauty and
local colour, the festival, which in those particulars yields to none
save that of St. Rosalia at Palermo, was most interesting. But one
detail there was which filled me with horror--the sight of an immense
car, dragged along by a crowd of, wild enthusiasts, laden from top to
bottom with saints, virgins, and angels, represented, for the nonce, by
young people of both sexes, the whole thing surmounted, at a great
height above it, by a huge sun with gilded rays. So far there was
nothing to complain of. But when the car moved along, the rays of the
sun, by an ingenious mechanism, turned as well; and at the end of each
of these rays a poor little brat, dressed like a cherub, and crowned
with roses, had been hung, in a sort of fireman's belt, by its
barbarous parents. The tortures of the poor little creatures, hanging
thus by their middles, under a burning sun, and shaken up by every jolt
the machine gave as it turned, may be imagined.
By the time the abominable thing came past my window, amidst singing
and band-playing and cheering, most of the poor children were swinging
unconscious from the rays of the great sun which jolted heavily at
every turn it made. It was a disgusting sight; but we were the only
people to notice it and be shocked by it.
While at Naples, I was ordered to go to Rome to congratulate the new
Pope, Pius the Ninth, whose election had just taken place, in the name
of France. I started off at once, by Civita Vecchia, and reached the
palace of our embassy at Rome at night. At dawn a great noise made me
hastily open my window, anxious to know the reason of the uproar, and
also to get a first look at the Eternal City, where I was for the first
time in my life. It was raining, and the inhabitants of all the
adjacent houses, as well as the soldiers in the barracks over the way,
were all shouting at the top of their voices Acqua! Acqua! Acqua! It
sounded as if every cockatoo in Australia had settled upon the papal
city.
The rain had been long in its coming, it appears. But my first
impression of Rome was not a very inspiring one. And, indeed, I had
little opportunity of getting any others.
To mark the fact that I had come to the city solely on the Pope's
account, I only stayed two days, so that I saw nothing except the Pope
himself, or I rushed by everything else I was shown so hurriedly, that
it came to the same thing. During those forty-eight hours I was the
sole property of our embassy, and I could not have been in better
hands. We had representatives who were worthy of the name, in those
days,--real diplomats.
The ambassador was M. Rossi, my former teacher, a man of generous
feeling and high intelligence, who was soon to be the victim of one of
the most cowardly crimes ever perpetrated by the revolutionary tribe.
The secretary to the embassy was the present Due de Broglie. By these
two gentlemen I was conducted into the Pope's presence. Being very
ignorant of the proper ceremonial to follow, I asked M. Rossi what I
was to call his Holiness.
"Tres chaint Pere, ou cha Chaintete," he answered, with an accent which
I took good care not to imitate.
Having gone past the fine Swiss Guard, in their sixteenth-century
dress, and their officer in helmet and cuirass, and then past the
Guardia Nobile, and a huge staff of ecclesiastics in violet robes, I
bent low before the sovereign pontiff, and kissed his ring with deep
emotion. Raising my eyes, I saw a handsome old man, tall in stature,
with a kind face, dressed all in white, to whom I delivered the message
of which I was the bearer. At that moment I had a glimpse of a fair
dream, which M. Rossi endeavoured to realise at a later date. It was to
make a close alliance between France and a Confederation of all the
Italian States--our allies already by relationship between the reigning
families, or by community of interest of all kinds--under the
protectorate of the Pope, at once our devoted friend and the head of
the Catholic religion all over the whole world. But the fair dream was
never to come true. Its patriotic promoter, M. Rossi, fell under the
assassin's hand, and every passion--revolutionary, anti-religious, and
anti-French--joined hands to make it fail. In its place we have Italian
unity and a dethroned Pope.
After a pleasant evening at the embassy, with Cardinal Gizzi,
Monsignore de Falloux, the Princes and Princesses of the Massimo
family, and a very charming young lady, Princess Rospigliosi, sister to
a naval cadet attached to my staff, named Champagny, who afterwards
became the Due de Cadore, I returned to Naples by the Pontine Marshes
and Terracina, where the strains of Auber's Fra Diavolo kept springing
to my lips.
The squadron remained in Neapolitan waters until the festival of Pie di
Grotta, on which occasion the King took me with him to a great review
he held--a very noisy and lively scene it was--in the Toledo, the great
artery of the town, with its picturesque vistas on to Vesuvius. The
National Guard was of modern growth, and lamentable at that. Then came
the regular army, and especially four Swiss regiments with their
artillery, a magnificent division of troops. As long as they are here,
I said to myself, there need be no fear of revolutions. But just
because their valour and fidelity promised a reception little to the
taste of the sedition-mongers, those prudent modern condottieri were
waving their warlike pens, and loudly demanding the disembodiment of
these very regiments. It pained me to notice the icy reception given to
the brave fellows as they marched past, and I could not help feeling a
gloomy foreboding.
That sheet anchor of the Neapolitan Monarchy was destroyed before long
by one of those compromises with rebellion so frequent in these
days--disastrous proceedings, which inevitably lead the way by their
evil and demoralising example, to other compromises, infinitely more
lamentable, alas!--I mean compromise with a foreign enemy.
At the time when I bore the King company at that review it was not his
Swiss regiments alone who were the object of the agitators' fury, but
his government and his own person as well. A sort of general conspiracy
against them was brewing, fomented for the most part by foreign agents,
some of them actually diplomats, who thus openly abused the immunity
their functions gave them; and it was propagated by means of the secret
societies which are an endemic plague in Italian countries. King and
Government alike fought as best they could against the current of
revolution, and they did so rightly, in the general interest, for
revolution brings nothing but ruin in its train.
But beside the adventurers who shrank from no crime, and who preached
assassination and plunder, there stood many honourable and enlightened
Neapolitans, who desired the reform of abuses (and God knows there were
plenty of them!) and the progressive amelioration of the moral and
material conditions of existence. Unhappily it was on these men, whose
sole offence lay in their opinions, that the brutality, and I might add
the horrors, of the repressive measures adopted seemed by preference to
fall. The prisons of those days, in which they were confined, were
perfect dens, and I greatly fear they are much the same all over Italy
even now. I doubt, for instance, that the convict prison at Pescara
would yield in the matter of abominations to the convict prison at
Nisida, some forty years ago.
When peoples who have long lived in a state of backwardness, have a
sudden fit of cleanliness, in imitation of more advanced nations, they
are apt to clean the outside walls only, and to leave all their
accustomed filth hidden behind them. I mention these terrible prisons
because, during the visit of the squadron to Naples, I was guilty of
snatching two distinguished men, both much sought after by the police
on account of the offensive opinions I have already spoken of, from
their clutches. M. Lutteroth, the secretary to our embassy, went and
fetched them at night from their hiding-place, and I put them on board
one of my ships, which was sailing at once for Tunis. I have no
recollection of their names. And indeed that was not the only instance
in which we saved people compromised in Italian politics, out of sheer
humanity. Long after the incident of which I speak, a Piedmontese
officer, who performed brilliant services in our African army, side by
side with my brothers, begged Aumale to put him into communication with
our mother. He then conjured her, as a woman and a Neapolitan, to save
a prisoner, who was seriously compromised (whether his relative or his
friend I no longer recollect), from the gallows, and my mother wrote a
most pressing letter to King Ferdinand at his request. The King, who
had always preserved the tenderest and most respectful affection for
his aunt, and glad also, I make no doubt (for he was a kind man), to
have an opportunity of setting mercy above arguments of state, granted
my mother the pardon she craved. The name of the man thus spared was
Nicotera.
This taken for granted, as they say in mathematics, I hie me back to my
squadron at Spezzia, a splendid bay, which at that time we were the
only people to use as an anchorage, but in which the Italians have now
established a great naval arsenal. The bay is very safe and convenient
for drill and practice. But I have one fault to find with it. I never
took my ships there without an epidemic of influenza colds breaking
out, and affecting three or four hundred men in each crew. These
outbreaks are due, in my opinion, to the high wooded mountains which
shadow the bay on the western side, and to its sudden transitions from
the most scorching sunshine to very cool shade. Our ships attracted
several tourists, and one morning I saw a party appear on board,
consisting, amongst other people, of the Marquis de Boissy, a witty and
restless French peer, married to the Comtesse Giuccioli, of Byronian
memory, and of the Marquis Oldoini, accompanied by an exquisite young
lady, his daughter, who afterwards became that superb beauty, the
Comtesse de Castiglione.
M. de Boissy tried to talk politics to me and to reiterate the famous
phrase "Be strong." But whenever anybody began to talk to me about
questions of home politics, with which I had nothing to do, my partial
deafness always became complete.
More cruising and manoeuvring carried the squadron over to Algiers,
which it reached in June, 1847, just when Marshal Bugeaud was giving up
his position as governor-general of the colony. We rendered him
viceregal honours at his departure, and I can still see his grand white
head, as he stood uncovered on the bridge of the ship which bore him
away, and passed slowly between the lines of warships, with their
cannon thundering, drums rolling, bands playing the Marseillaise, and
crews cheering wildly. He left that Algerian territory, which he had so
largely contributed to acquire to France, with a sad heart, and for
ever. But the European horizon was darkening, serious events were
evidently pending, and if war was to result fiom them, France would
have had, in the person of the soldier we were thus saluting, a general
whom all, without exception, would have served with equal devotion and
absolute confidence. To us Frenchmen, this confidence in our leader,
which emboldens every one, and suppresses all doubt and hesitation, is
half the battle. It was possessed, and completely, not by Bugeaud
himself alone--all his lieutenants had acquired it. During fifteen
years of fighting and of detached expeditions, in which they had all,
turn about, held independent commands, both officers and soldiers had
been able to gauge their valour, their intelligence, and that capacity
for bearing the weight of undivided responsibility, which is the great
test of a commander-in-chief. The advantage thus gained was immense.
But are we sure the country got the benefit of all the services which
this band of soldiers, consecrated already by the opinion of their
military compeers, might have rendered her? Was it not rather scattered
to the winds by the ruinous action of political forces?
I took advantage of the squadron's visit to Algiers to make an
excursion to Boghar, on the desert frontier. This expedition was both
interesting and amusing. My first day's stage took me to Blidah, into
which place I made the quaintest entry, surrounded by all the
authorities, who had come out as far as the monument to Sergeant
Blandan to meet me I had not travelled a hundred paces among these
gentlemen before the frankest cordiality began to exist between me and
them. Colonel Claparede, on my right, with whom this meeting was my
first, was asking me if I had ever been fool enough to fall in love;
Colonel Baville, of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, on my left, whose face was
also a new one to me, was inquiring whether I did not agree with him
that children were born with extraordinary rapidity in the African
climate, while Bourbaki, the secretary of the Arab office, was
performing the wildest fantasia in front of us at the head of the
Hadjout Goum.
At Medeah, whither I went by the Mouzai'a Pass, so as to see the scene
of the fights in which my brothers had played such a noble part, I had
another reception, and another fantasia was performed (but this time it
was on foot), by the Coulouglis and the Beni Mzab, wearing great hats
with ostrich feathers in them. Then came a grotesque imitation of the
fantasia, performed by the colonial militia, all drunk, who fired their
pistols off under my nose and blackened my face with powder. General
Marey, commanding at Medeah, owned the Romance vintage in Burgundy, and
gave us some to drink at dinner, which did not diminish the general
cordiality. Ah, well! a glass of good French wine, drunk far from home
and the dissensions of the mother country, among comrades ready to give
their lives for her at any moment, is a thing worth remembering!
Boghar, hideous and scorchingly hot as it is, would be downright
uninhabitable if it were not washed by the waters of the Cheliff. The
necessities arising from our conquest of the country had made it a
revictualling post for our columns, and a trial had just been made
there of a new sort of provision, described as rations maigres. These
consisted of biscuit and dried cod, and not having been issued within
the period reckoned for, they were beginning to go bad. To avoid
financial loss, a pretty numerous garrison had been at once despatched
to Boghar to perform the far from pleasant duty of consuming them.
Thanks to the exertions of the officer in command, M. de Monet, who
afterwards attained the rank of general, and lost both his arms in the
Crimea, the spirit of his men was admirable, but their sanitary
condition was quite deplorable. And when I received the officers, one
of them, a captain of Engineers, with the tacit assent of his chief,
acted as the mouthpiece of the rest in begging me to raise my voice to
put an end to their cruel sufferings. He represented to me that the
unhealthiness of the place was aggravated by a process of poisoning.
The troops had been sent up simply to eat damaged biscuit and stinking
cod. There was no other food issued for the men, and as the
neighbourhood produced nothing whatever, it was impossible to vary it
in any way. Everybody was more or less ill in consequence, and if this
state of things went on they must all die. A distinguished officer, M.
de Cissey, who had been detailed as my aide-de-camp during my trip,
took the poor fellows' case in hand, and undertook to lay their
complaint before the general.
I saw something else at Boghar which was not so depressing--another
fantasia, a huge one, performed by thousands of Arabs, who had hastened
in from all quarters. At the very height of the show, another tribe,
the most picturesque of them all, the Ouled-Nails, arrived on the
scene, having travelled thirty leagues to do homage to me as the "son
of the Sultan." There were 1,500 horsemen and their wives, who were
carried by something like a hundred camels in a kind of palanquin,
covered with gaudy stuffs, which they call "atatich." When they
arrived, the excitement of the fantasia rose to madness. The horsemen
from the south, in their splendid dresses, showed off all their skill,
and whenever one of them performed any specially brilliant feat, the
deafening "you-you" of the women rose from the circle of palanquins as
from the benches of a circus.
The background of this eminently picturesque scene, under the blazing
eastern sun, was the wide horizon of the mountains of Bou Cada and
Taguin, amongst which my brother Aumale captured Abd-el-Kadir's smalah.
On my way back from Boghar I paid a visit to the military works at the
Chiffa Gorge, where the 33rd Regiment of the Line was building a
wonderful road, under circumstances of the utmost danger and
difficulty; and I returned from my tour in Africa feeling deeper
admiration and respect than ever for our soldiers, who are as patient
under hardship, and as plucky when they have to work in dangerous
places, as they are brave in actual battle.
Leaving Algiers, the squadron continued its cruise. We were a great
deal at sea, much more than is feasible nowadays, when it costs
something considerable in fuel to go the smallest distance. We anchored
one evening in a Sardinian bay, where nobody ever stopped by any
chance, but which offered a pleasant resting-place for the night at
that fine season.
After dinner, I gave the officers leave to go ashore. They found a
perfect desert, and any houses they came upon barricaded; but though
human inhabitants were lacking, there was an incredible amount of game.
Hares swarmed upon the ground. At last one inhabitant turned up, and
then some others, and friendly relations were established.
The population, it appeared, had fled at our approach, taking us (I am
not joking, truly) for Barbary Moors, coming to make a raid for slaves.
Information travels slowly in those parts.
We went to Cagliari, Palermo, Leghorn, Spezzia, and Genoa in
succession, and then the squadron returned to winter at Toulon. The
period of my command had run out save for these winter months. Being
much overworked, and far from well, I applied to be relieved of my
functions, and on the 26th November I made them over to Admiral
Trehouard, who had commanded one of the divisions under my orders.
Trehouard was a brave Breton, who had performed a splendid feat during
an action at Obligado in La Plata, where he commanded the French
portion of an Anglo-French flotilla, sent to force its way up the
river, which was blocked by a boom and defended by a number of forts.
The little fleet met with an energetic and obstinate resistance.
Several ships had been put hors de combat, including Trehouard's own,
which was disabled and had half her crew on shore. The struggle lasted
on still, and threatened to end in our defeat, when Captain Hope,
commanding the English contingent, ordered out his boats, and went and
cut through the boom under a hail of bullets, while Trehouard boarded
the last ship he had that was able to move, and ordered her commander,
M. de Miniac, who lost his leg at St. Juan d'Ulloa, to run her ashore
close to the enemy's principal battery.
After a momentary struggle, and in spite of the Argentine officers'
shouts of "Fuego al pelo blanco!" (Fire at the white head!), (Trehouard
was prematurely gray), on the quarterdeck; the moral and physical
result of the hand-to-hand struggle ended in a complete rout of the
enemy. Trehouard was made a rear-admiral, and no man ever deserved his
step better.
A young officer was killed beside him that day whose name was Hello.
His father, a friend of mine, had put him under my wing when he left
the Naval College, and I had watched over his career with sincere
affection for several years. Every time I pass one of the commonplace
statues placed in our public squares in memory of political chatterers
who have died quietly in their beds, I think of all those brave fellows
who have died obscurely for their country, with no funeral oration but
the tears of their broken-hearted families, but who have carried away
to their eternal dwelling-place the proud consolation of duty performed.
I returned to Paris. What a state of things was there! Politics had
overwhelmed everything else. To the lovers of order, who had already
found their condition oppressive, the state of affairs was soon to
become fatal. The makers of sedition, on the other hand, found it most
blessed. But to the country at large, as events have too surely proved,
it was disastrous.
I will not dwell too long on this sad period, my personal recollections
of which are mingled with the events of a well-known page of our
national history.
Towards the beginning of the winter of 1848 the doctors ordered my
wife, who was in very delicate health, to go and spend the cold months
in a southern climate, and I started with her and my children for
Algiers, where I joined my brother Aumale, who had become
governor-general of the colony. I arrived, weighed down with gloomy
forebodings, feeling convinced that by dint of trying to respect those
so-called legal restraints which paralyse a government, but which do so
little to hinder any revolutionary section in its action, we should end
by being overwhelmed, and by hearing the fatal hour strike, the "too
late" that comes with every revolution. Yet I did not believe that hour
so close at hand as it was. For I had hardly settled down at Algiers,
when one fine morning the announcement of the February revolution and
the proclamation of the republic came upon us like the bursting of a
shell. The news arrived in the shape of vague rumours, uncertain
information, reports of various kinds, brought over from Marseilles. As
to the amount of authenticity they possessed--whether the movement was
a general one or confined to Paris only, whether a stand was being made
against it anywhere--on all these points the earliest rumours were
mute, and they were just as silent as to what had befallen the King and
the rest of our family, in the confusion. We were reduced to the
wildest conjectures, and were wondering whether we ought not to start
for France at once, when a steam corvette from Toulon brought me the
following despatch:--
The Minister for Naval Affairs to Monsieur le Prince de Joinville.
28th February, 1848, 8.30 p.m.
Prince,
The well-being of the country demands that you should make no attempt
to dissuade the crews or soldiers of the navy from their obedience to
the Provisional Government. It is important that you should not attempt
to set foot on French soil, nor communicate with any vessel in the
French fleet, till further orders.
Prince, your patriotic instinct will enable you to resign yourself to
this sacrifice, and to perform it unflinchingly. Such is the confident
hope of the Provisional Government. ARAGO.
The signatory of this despatch had taught me in my youth, and I had
kept up affectionate intercourse with him since. But the coolness with
which the man (a great savant, no doubt, but who up to this had never
done anything but make calculations and handle telescopes) invested
himself with supreme authority amazed me. Exasperated as I was by his
summons "to make no attempt to dissuade the sailors and soldiers of the
navy from their obedience" to his hour-old government, in other words,
from the violation of their oath which he was about to ask of all the
brave fellows, I forgot both my former relations with the man and the
courteous form of his despatch; and I was in a transport of rage as I
handed the missive to Changarnier, commanding the troops, and M.
Vaisse, the civil secretary-general, who were both of them present, in
my brother's study.
"That is a summons from the enemy," I said; "we must do the very
contrary."
But M. Vai'sse was silent, and Changarnier shook his head. I bethought
me then, alas! that in this day of progress of ours the religion of a
man's oath is but an empty word--and I recovered my self-possession.
My aide-de-camp, Commander Touchard, had come from Paris by the same
corvette that had brought me the despatch. He had seen the crash, had
been present when the National Guard, upon whom my brother Nemours had
called to resist the rioters, had overwhelmed him with abuse, had
witnessed the abdication, the scenes in the Chamber, and the King's
final departure. All the way across France, too, except at Toulon,
where the strong hand of the navy made itself felt, Touchard had
watched the eager speculations of the majority on the accomplished
fact, and the struggle as to who should first offer his services to the
Provisional Government, before the corpse of Constitutional Monarchy
was cold--for dead it was, without having struck a blow in its own
defence.
There was no doubt about the King's personal courage. He had proved it
on many battle-fields--at Valmy, Jemmapes, and Nerwinde--and under the
frequent attempts made on him by would-be assassins. With courage of a
rarer kind, he had never hesitated to brave unpopularity, when his
doing so was clearly to the country's interest. But he had striven,
being honest as well as brave, to be faithful to the institutions he
had sworn to maintain, although those who opposed him had long ceased
to respect the fiction of the constitution, and had become a frankly
revolutionist body, which no longer directed its attack against the
ministry of the day, but against the King's own person, and all that
edifice on the summit of which the throne was placed.
Had he chosen to take the initiative, in order to prevent what
ultimately happened, he would not have failed for want of means. When
the army and the administration are in a man's hands, he can do very
much as he chooses. Successive revolutions have destroyed all respect
among us, except respect for main force; and it is a true saying that
if strength begets respect, respect in its turn begets affection. But
the King, who was the most moderate of men, would not go beyond legal
limits except as a last resource. And this characteristic of his was
well and universally known to all, both to friends and foes. While it
discouraged the former, it to some extent encouraged the latter, and so
the signal for recourse to force came from below, the pretorians of the
street rose in rebellion, and the defenders of the law were everywhere
overcome. In a few moments the confusion became general, and the
revolution was an accomplished fact.
And yet, even so late in the day, in other countries than our own
indeed, generals, and others invested with the chief command of the
national troops, have been known to draw their swords and save their
sovereigns and their governments almost in spite of their own selves.
They have been known to maintain the tutelary and inviolable principle
of a traditional monarchy--a principle which is both ancient and
absolute, tracing the line of duty for all men, clear and indisputable,
without any possibility of hesitation or compromise--against and in the
face of all comers. And this principle is one which calls forth the
proudest devotion, seeing it is impersonal, for the king is not the
elected leader of conquerors, oppressing the conquered, but a living
flag, the national rallying-point for all the defenders of the mother
country against her enemies, whether within or without her borders.
This saving process, whether the saved ones would or no, has been seen,
as I say, in other countries, which thus were preserved from that
discord, disorganisation, and disaster of every kind, which are the
inevitable consequence of internal convulsion and revolution.
But the July Monarchy was unhappily very far from representing the
traditional hereditary principle. Born of one insurrection, it was
overthrown by another. Set up on the electoral principle, it fell, as
though in mockery, with a full electoral majority behind it.
Two-and-twenty years later the empire too fell, on the very morrow of a
triumphant plebiscite. Partial and universal suffrage alike have proved
their impotence to defend a government which has ceased to give
satisfaction against the assaults of that army shouting "Get out of
that and let me take your place!" the members of which always make
themselves up as austere patriots. And I cannot help, in this place,
looking sadly back at the fatal consequences which this impotence of
the elective, as compared with the monarchical regime, has had for us.
Why did the Emperor refuse to treat with M. de Bismarck in the name of
France, when he met him, on the evening of Sedan, and asked him to do
so? Why did the unfortunate prince not do the same as two sovereigns in
possession of hereditary rights and duties, Victor Emmanuel after
Novara, and Francis Joseph after Sadowa, who both of them safeguarded
their territory and the honour of their armies? Because he was a
bastard sovereign--and dared not reappear before his electors once he
was beaten.
But to return to my story, to which I have but a few lines to add. The
revolution might have been foreseen and the days of the government of
1830 might have been prolonged. Once it was overthrown, and the dyke
which stemmed the torrent of democracy carried away, its rule, which
was one of chance convenience and not of right, had no further reason
for existence.
That being so, what was I to do? The re-establishment of the legitimate
family on the throne was out of the question. The disasters of our
first revolutionary period had not as yet been renewed in their
terrible logical sequence. We had not yet had our second Waterloo at
Sedan, and very few people thought at that moment of coming back to the
principle the proof of whose title lies in the centuries of unity and
greatness assured by it to France--the one and only principle capable
of checking her on her descent into the abyss of dismemberment,
depopulation, and social destruction, down which she is gliding.
It was clear that another elective regime was about to succeed the one
which had just collapsed--one of those modern edifices, all, whatever
may be the name with which they are decorated, tainted with the same
original weakness--"What the majority has made, the majority has the
right to unmake." In fact--as somebody said in a speech--a perpetually
provisional arrangement Under these ephemeral forms of rule, our
national inferiority in face of other stable and far-sighted
governments is flagrantly evident. The sense of duty wears away,
devoted service is never given without a mental reservation touching
the morrow--that unknown morrow, which checkmates the boldest plans.
Thus constituted, such regimes are all alike, and it was not for the
princes of the House of France to draw their swords to impose one form
of national humiliation rather than another on their country.
When once my father's rule had disappeared, and with it the unvarying
line of duty traced by my absolute filial devotion to him, I watched
the establishment of a republican form of government without annoyance,
for I preferred its clear distinctness to the complicated combinations
which pretended to reconcile two opposite principles by putting
handcuffs on them both.
Like many others, too, I did not doubt that the shock of revolution
would soon bring on a general war. Under such circumstances, it would
have been crime to add the pangs of civil strife to the dangers
threatening our country.
Thenceforward, my duty lay clear before me. My country first of all!
That watchword still exists, thank God, to guide those who yet can love
their country whatever may befall them. When once my first fit of
indignation was over, then, I did not think of returning from Africa,
sword in hand, to set up the throne again. I contented myself with
sending a very commonplace despatch to Arago, and then I utilised the
last days I was to spend on French soil in studying the defensive works
ordered by my brother in view of that war, imminent perhaps, during
which, soldiers before all as we were, we expected, in the illusive
hopes of our youth, to be allowed to keep our place as fighting men.
The moment came at last when our presence at Algiers became
incompatible with the existence of a revolutionary government in Paris,
and we had to rejoin our family in their foreign exile. We decided,
Aumale and I, to embark for England on board the despatch-boat Solon,
Commander Jaures. It was with heavy hearts, though proud ones, that we
went down the Rue de la Marine, under the salutes of the forts, and
accompanied to the last by the whole body of officers, both naval and
military, so many of them our old friends and faithful comrades.
Thirty years of my life had been spent in France. In spite of the
gnawing worm of revolution, my family left her intact, prosperous,
respected, with magnificent armies, both land and sea, and a no less
magnificent colony. I was not to see my country again for
two-and-twenty years, and then in all the horror of invasion and
dismemberment and the terror of the Commune.
THE END