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things since their departure; and in vain they sought for the ancient world which they found everywhere altered, and which they wished to find everywhere the same. There were other parties; there were the parties of the Revolution; the parties of the Empire; there were the parties that had stormed the Tuileries on the 10th of August; voted the death of Louis XVI. on the 21st of January (1793); assisted Bonaparte on the 18th of Brumaire (1799); and vowed allegiance to his empire on the 2d of December (1804); there were the Republicans by principle, the Imperialists by gratitude, habit, and interest. Could the royalists be employed? Could the republicans be gained? Could the imperialists be trusted? There was universal division, even where there was the appearance of universal content. The emigration rejoiced at the idea of a court which would breathe life into the forgotten memories of Versailles; the more liberal of the old assemblies and the senate equally rejoiced at the substitution of a constitutional king for a military despot; and the high dignitaries of the empire imagined for a time that their services would be remembered, and their origin forgotten.

The momentary force of the restoration was in its giving hopes to all; the permanent weakness of the restoration was, in the necessity of its giving disappointment to all. The satisfaction was immediate; it surrounded the horse of the Comte d'Artois, and applauded his graceful air; it followed the coach of the royal exile from Hartwell, and in spite of the bonnet of the Duchesse d'Angoulême,* and the Englishified aspect of the Duc de Berri, remarked the wit of Louis's conversation, the dignity of his manner, and the benevolence of his countenance. The satisfaction was immediate-the dissatisfaction gradually developed itself-until each party had assaulted the system which each party had expected to control. The military were the first to

*Nothing, however, tended, at the time, more to add to the dislike, and to increase the contempt with which a certain portion of the Parisians regarded the royal family, than to find them-so ill dressed.

feel disgusted at the change. The veterans of the "vieille garde" of the "grande armée" could little brook the insolence of those favoured troops, who, reviving the old names, the old uniforms, the old prejudices of a by-gone system, considered it their principal distinction to have escaped the contaminating victories of a usurper. Offended at the loss of their eagles, passionately fond of their ancient colours, the soldiery received a new provocation in the order to change the numbers of their regiments; and obeyed, with illsmothered indignation, the command which severed them from the last of their military recollections ; and if the soldiery considered themselves aggrieved, so also did the generals and the marshals of the empire deem they had their causes of complaint. The recent genealogies of the camp lost their illustration before the ancient chivalry of the court. Trusted with high commands, the great officers of Napoleon were treated with little respect; while their wives-long accustomed to the homage of that ardent and warlike youth who passed with alternate passions from the battle to the ball-long accustomed to have their charms undisputed and adored, now galled by the contempt of a new race of rivals, now disconcerted by the formal "hauteur" of the old courtier, and the supercilious disregard of the young noble, filled the "salons" of the Queen Hortense, listened with sparkling eyes to the vivacious sallies of Madame Hamelin,* and sighed for the graceful confidences of Josephine, and the splendid days of Marie Louise. The army then was the first to be disgusted; the battle of Waterloo decided that the wishes of the army could not be obeyed.

Nothing could have happened more fortunate for the Bourbons than the events of the hundred days; those events had alarmed the civil part of the nation at the

* The hundred days might fairly be called "the revolution of the women;" and among the ladies engaged in the intrigues of the time, the most conspicuous for her talents, her conversation, her energy, her charms, and the confidence of Bonaparte, was that lady whom I have just mentioned!

power which the military part possessed; they had rendered the nation jealous of the army; they had dispersed and dispirited the army itself; they had shown France that she could only obtain a change by a war with Europe, and that for such a war she was too weak; and more than all this, they had furnished a comparison between "the additional act" of the empire, and "the constitutional charta" of the restoration.

If Bonaparte, by his defeat on the field of battle, attached to his name some melancholy and affectionate remembrances, the recollections which Louis XVIII. had left in the legislative assembly; the calm courage and the noble dignity with which, in the presence of his military rival, he had held the charta as a buckler before the throne, were favourable to his person, and threw a constitutional halo round the renewal of his reign.*

The remonstrances of foreign diplomacy, the manifest faults which the royalists had themselves committed, the bitter lesson that Bonaparte brought with him from Elba, the certainty that the nation was neutral and the army hostile-the good sense of Louis XVIII. himself, who saw that his policy must be to unite under the wing of the monarchy the different factions into which an attachment to the old "régime," a prominent part in the revolution, or a situation under the empire, had split his agitated and divided peopleprocured for a moment the appearance of moderation, which the dismissal of the Duc de Blacas, and the ap

*It was before quitting Paris that Louis XVIII., who had, from the first landing of Napoleon, shown calmness, firmness, and dignity, made the attempt to excite a constitutional enthusiasm by appearing to the chambers, and delivering one of those remarkable discourses which no one better knew how to utter or compose. "Celui qui vient allumer parmi nous les torches de la guerre civile y apporte aussi la fléau de la guerre étrangère, il vient remettre notre patrie sous son joug de fer, il vient enfin détruire cette charte constitutionnelle que je vous ai donnée, cette charte, mon plus beau titre aux yeux de la postérité, cette charte, que tous les Français chérissent, et que je jure ici de maintenir."We'll die for the king," shouted the people; but "liberty" was not at that time a habit, and Bonaparte marched to Paris at the head of his troops.

pointment of Fouché, a regicide, and Guizot, a Protestant, to office, seemed to guaranty. But how often is it deemed impossible to adopt a general system of conciliation without a partial display of force. The party who clamour for punishment must be appeased, while there is something fatally flattering to human vanity in the demonstration that if we choose to be generous we dare to be severe. Hence those fatal executions and proscriptions which overshadowed the great name of the Duke of Wellington, and revived the worst memories of the French, republic. Hence the exile of Carnot, the assassination of Labédoyère,* while Nismes, Toulouse, and Marseilles were disgraced by the madness of an infuriated populace,† and the blood of Marshal Brune at Avignon disgraced the cause of royalty and religion.

The

It was now that a new class of persons, attached to the Bourbons at the commencement of their reign, began to wish and to conspire for their overthrow. republicans and the more liberal part of the constitutionalists had welcomed the restoration from their hatred of Bonaparte and though the senate felt that the octroyization of the charta was an attack in point of form upon the privileges of the nation, still it felt also that that charta did in fact assure those privileges. We find then that Barras, previous to the hundred days, warned the Duc de Blacas of the catastrophe that was preparing, and that Manuel and Lafayette, after the battle of Waterloo, paralyzed all Napoleon's further plans of resistance. Had it not been for thishad the liberal and the military part of France been at that time united, a battle would have been fought under the walls of Paris, and the army of the Loire might have been still formidable to the invaders.

The persecutions of Louis XVIII. effected that

*Labédoyère was not actually brought to trial until the ministry of Richelieu.

It is but justice to observe, that the state of the Protestants in the South excited the attention of the British and Prussian goven ments, who insisted on the repression of these disorders.

which the misfortunes of Bonaparte had not been able to produce; they united against the restoration the opponent parts of the empire, i. e. the heroes who had formed its glory, the patriots who had objected to its principles. But how far was Louis XVIII. to blame?

Every day made his difficulties more apparent: the government of Monsieur de Talleyrand, notwithstanding the cruel compliances which alienated one party, found it impossible to resist the wrath which its mere reputation for liberality excited in another.

Fouché published his celebrated memorials* among the most important political documents that ever appeared; and finally, the Prince of Benevento found himself obliged to tender his resignation.

The mass of the imperial army, the more violent of the imperial, opposition, were now hostile to the Bourbon "régime;" a conflict commenced between the more moderate and the more bigoted royalists, as to who should administer its affairs. At the head of these parties were the monarch now in exile-the monarch then upon the throne.

There had been between these two princes a kind of jealous rivalry from their very boyhood. Celebrated for his grace, his intrigues, the flower of the fashionable nobility of Versailles, the Comte d'Artois had early in his favour all the more brilliant part of the court of Marie Antoinette. The women extolled him, the young men imitated him, and applauded the frankness of his follies, in opposition to the more reserved carriage and the more serious pursuits of the Comte de Provence. Moreover, the aristocracy of the emigration, instituting a kind of periodical hierarchy among themselves, placed the persons who departed after the first triumph of the revolution in a much higher rank than those who subsequently retired.†

The Comte d'Artois then, opposed to any popular compliances, was decidedly the royalist chief. Proud

* See Appendix.

† Louis XVIII. frequently complained in private of this distinction.

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