of honour, is the army which has march- | orders for the journey to Cherbourg on ed out of Paris against me really eighty the following day. The intelligence of thousand strong?" And a French sol- this determination caused the few redier and marshal answered, "Sire! I giments of the line which still adhered cannot give you the number exactly, to his standard to take their departure. but it is very numerous, and may But nothing could shake the fidelity of amount to that force." "Enough!" the greater portion of the Guard, which, replied the King; "I believe you, and in diminished strength, though with I consent to everything, to spare the sad hearts and mournful visages, folblood of my Guard." * With that he lowed the long cortège of carriages gave orders for the departure of the which was conveying their sovereign court for Cherbourg, to embark for and the royal family into exile. They England, the common refuge for the halted the first night at Maintenon, unfortunate of all ranks and parties and the splendid seat of the family of countries. Marshal Maison had not Noailles, built by Louis XIV. for his long before been placed by Charles X. favourite queen, where they were reat the head of the army which he had ceived with noble generosity by its ilsent to Greece, as has been already nar-lustrious owners; and there, on the folrated in the history of that country. France and its army were far from the day when the dying Chevalier Bayard said to the pursuing and conquering Constable de Bourbon, "Pity not me; pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath."

M.

94. The die being now cast, and the final resolution taken, the King gave * M. Louis Blanc's account of this important interview is substantially the same. Odillon Barrot prit la parole avec assurance. Il parla des horreurs de la guerre civile, du danger de braver des passions encore incandescentes. Et comme Charles X. insistait sur les droits du Duc de Bordeaux formellement réservés par l'Acte d'Abdication, l'orateur lui réprésenta, d'une voix caressante, que ce n'était pas dans le sang qu'il fallait placer le trône de Henri V. Etsoixante mille hommes menacent Rambouillet,' ajouta le Maréchal Maison. A ces mots le Roi, qui marchait à grands pas;

s'arrête et fait signe au Maréchal Maison qu'il désire l'entretenir en particulier. Après quelques moments d'hésitation le Maréchal y consent. Alors le regardant fixement, Monsieur, lui dit le Roi, je crois à votre loyauté—je suis prêt à me fler à votre parole; est-il vrai que l'armée Parisienne qui s'avance soit composée de soixante mille hommes?' 'OUI, ŠIRE.' Charles X. n'hésita plus. Le Duc de Luxembourg publia un Ordre du Jour, pour apprendre aux Gardes que leur position sons Henri V. serait la même que sous Charles X.: tant le vieux Monarque avait de peine à se persuader qu'il eût un successeur dans le LieutenantGénéral. Il le croyait si peu qu'il chargea M. Alexandre de Girardin d'aller prendre à Paris 600,000 francs sur le trésor; et comme il était revenu qu'on craignait qu'il n'emportât les diamants de la Couronne, il repoussa cette supposition avec beaucoup de véhémence et de dignité. Pourquoi d'ailleurs aurait-il emporté des diamants qu'il savait faire partie de Î'héritage de son petit-fils."-LOUIS BLANC, Dix Ans de Louis Philippe, i. 400, 401.

lowing morning, the King bade adieu to the greater part of the Guard, reserving only for his escort to the coast the Gardes-du-corps and Gendarmerie d'Elite, with six pieces of cannon, under the command of Marmont, on whom he had generously bestowed it, to show he retained no rancour for the events at Paris and St Cloud. The whole Guard was drawn up in the park and on the road as the royal cortège passed them, and they presented arms for the last time to their sovereign. No words can express the emotion which was felt on both sides. His faults, his imprudences, were forgotten in the magnitude of his fall; they saw only their monarch in misfortune, and the last of a long race of sovereigns, with his whole family, driven into exile by his own subjects.

Grief swelled every heart; few dry eyes were seen in the vast and noble array. The countenance of the King was sad, but calm; conscious of the purity of his intentions, he submitted to the chastisement of Providence with the resignation of a martyr. The Duchess d'Angoulême, inured to suffering, appeared to rise in dignity and heroism, amidst all the disasters which surrounded her. The Duchess de Berri, in male attire, and with her children in her hand, seemed scarce able to comprehend more than they the magnitude of the stroke which had deprived them of their inheritance. The King at length was melted into tears, and not a dry eye remained in

the ranks when the royal infants were, for the last time, presented to their aching eyes.

uttering a word of reproach. The only act of treason which he heard of during the journey was by his first subject.

96. The exiles remained two days at Valognes, to give time for the vessels which were expected to come round to Cherbourg; and as the districts where danger had been apprehended were now passed, Charles took the opportunity to dismiss the remains of his faithful Guard. He assembled around him the officers and six of the oldest privates of the companies and squadrons which yet composed his escort. The Duke and Duchess d'Angoulême, the Duchess de Berri, and the royal infants, were by his side. The King received from them the standards on which their fidelity had shed so much lustre, and thanked them for their devotion in words interrupted by sobs. "I receive," said he, "these standards, and this child will one day restore them to you. The names of each of you, inscribed on your musterrolls, and preserved by my grandson, will remain registered in the archives of the royal family, to attest for ever my misfortunes, and the consolation I have received from your fidelity. Sobs here choked his voice; the whole royal family which surrounded him, all the circle around, were melted into tears. The King and royal family then put off all the ensigns of royalty, and assumed the garb of exiles, suited to their destiny and their misfortunes.

95. The journey to Cherbourg lasted twelve days-a prolonged period of agony, during which the discrowned King and his unhappy family tasted, drop by drop, the cup of humiliation, suffering, and exile. The route was made to avoid the great towns, so that the King had never the mortification of seeing the royal arms supplanted by those of the Duke of Orléans, who had been proclaimed King on the 6th August. The peasantry in the villages through which they travelled, and where they passed the night, were silent and respectful they neither received them with acclamations nor with scoff's. There is something in great reverses which, in all but the most savage bosoms, melts to pity, or overawes into silence. Marmont, during the whole journey, rode on horseback at the right of the King's carriage, and many of the greatest nobles of France added to the lustre of their historic names by their fidelity to misfortune. The Duke of Luxembourg was there, and the Duke de Guiche; the Duke de Levis and the Duke de Polignac; Auguste de la Rochejaquelein-a name which sustained itself with honour amidst every reverse of the monarchy-and the Prince of Croz; the Count de Mesnard, the Count de Brissac, Baron Dumas, preceptor of the Duke de Bordeaux, and Madame Gontaut, governess of his young sister. 97. From Valognes Charles wrote Madame de St Maure, the Countess de two letters, one to the King of Eng. Bouillé, and several other ladies of dis- land, and another to the Emperor of tinction, were there also, and added to Austria, recounting his dethronement, the dignity of their rank by the display and requesting an asylum in their doof the fidelity by which it is ennobled. minions. As he received the requisite Great apprehensions were entertained permission from the English Governof some disturbances in Normandy on ment first, he set out for Cherbourg their passage through, as there had been on the 16th. Before quitting St Cloud many acts of incendiarism during the he had ordered Prince Polignac to preceding convulsions, but everything leave him. He did not, like Charles passed over in peace. The fall of the I., offer his Minister as a holocaust to monarchy had hushed into silence every appease the wrath of his people. "Set lesser passion. No tricolor flag or en-off," said he; “I order it. I recollect sign of revolution met his eye. At Ca- only your courage; I do not impute rentan only he received, in the Moni- to you our misfortunes. Our cause teur, the account of the successful usur- was that of God, of the throne, and pation of Louis Philippe. He read it in the people. Providence often proves silence, and laid down the paper without its servants by suffering, and defeats

the best designs, for reasons superior | on board-like the captain who, on a to what our limited faculties can dis- shipwreck, sees all the crew out of the cern; but it never deceives upright vessel before he leaves it himself. The consciences. Nothing is yet lost for few faithful officers who yet attended our house. I go to combat with one him then kissed his hand, which they hand, and to negotiate with the other. bathed with their tears. The disRetire behind the Loire, where you crowned sovereign then shut himself will find an asylum from the venge- up in his cabin to conceal his emoance of the people in the midst of my tion. The Great Britain packet-boat army, which has orders to assemble had the honour of conveying the ilat Chartres. Profoundly moved, the lustrious exiles. Not a gun was fired Prince kissed the King's hand and as the last of the long line of soveretired. His arrest, trial, and im- reigns left his country. In silence prisonment, will form an interesting the vessel ploughed through the melepisode in a subsequent volume of ancholy main, and steered for Scotthis History. land, where the cold courtesy of the English Government had for the second time offered them an asylum in the ancient palace of Holyrood; very different from what Louis XIV. had given, in his misfortunes, to James II. They there rested at last in the scene of the sorrows of Queen Mary, and of the transient gleams of prosperity which illuminated, ere they were shrouded in darkness, the fortunes of Charles Edward.

98. From the summit of the hill which overlooks Cherbourg, the King first beheld the sea on which he was about to embark. It was thought an attempt would be made on his life on going through the streets. The Duchess d'Angoulême no sooner heard this than she mounted the chariot with him, determined to share his dangers. Nothing of the kind, however, occurred. The streets were crowded as the exiles passed along, but no seditious cries or murmurs assailed their ears in the last city of their country which was impressed by their footsteps. The tricolor flags were removed from the windows as they moved along, to spare the vanquished monarch the sight of his humiliation. The carriages did not stop in the town, but passed on at once to the place of embarkation, from which the crowd were excluded by barricades. On descending from the carriage, at the place of embarkation, the whole royal family burst into tears; the infants even, unconscious as yet what they were losing, wept bitterly, Such was the emotion of the Duchess d'Angoulême that she sank in a swoon. M. de la Rochejaquelein aided her to step on board, and leave her country for ever. At least, the last arm on which she rested was that of one of the noblest of its sons. M. de Charette, another Vendean officer, whose name was a presage alike of heroism and misfortune, conducted the Duchess de Berri. Charles himself, who alone retained his selfpossession, was the last who stepped

99. Thus fell the dynasty of the Restoration-and fell, to all appearance, never, as a hereditary house, to be restored. The main object of the first Revolution having been the abolition of hereditary privileges, and the extinction of hereditary descent, it was scarcely to be expected that the highest rank and station in the country was to be exempted from its influence. To throw open all objects and situations to all, to tender to all alike the career of ambition, was the end to which the nation so passionately aspired; and was it to be supposed that the highest prize in the lottery was not to be placed in the wheel? This, accordingly, is exactly what has happened. With the exception of the fifteen years of the Restoration, during which the ancient race, imposed upon them with difficulty, bore the weight of a crown of thorns, every monarch since 1789 has been elected, as in ancient Rome, by the people and the army. Napoleon, Louis Philippe, Louis Napoleon, have been successively chosen from different families amidst

though not absolutely bound to defer to their wishes in the first instance, yet, having tried the last resort of a dissolution, and received from the nation a legislature equally determined on the subject, it was his undoubted duty, as a constitutional monarch, to obey. Chateaubriand has recorded his opinion that if he had done so, and given office to five or six Liberal leaders, who were dying to be ministers, he would have weathered the storm, and transmitted a peaceful and honoured throne to his descendants.

general transports, and the two first | whether he was to maintain, contrary precipitated from the throne amidst to their wishes, the ultra-Royalist Aduniversal obloquy. Fickle in every- ministration he had chosen; and althing else, the French have been faithful to one thing only-their love of change. But we are not to ascribe this to any peculiar inconstancy of character in the French nation from which other races are exempt. All people under similar circumstances would do the same. The destruction of a hereditary aristocracy renders the maintenance of a hereditary throne impossible. One successful revolt, which overturns a throne, leaves the nation which has effected it no alternative but a repetition of similar violent changes. It was so in ancient Rome, when the fervour of the Gracchi and the civil wars of Marius terminated in the elective military despotism of the Cæsars. Even that family could not long keep the throne. The great name of the Dictator could not secure it for any considerable time for his successors. It passed into other hands, and became the prize of the most popular citizen, the most fortunate soldier. An elective military despotism is the natural, and perhaps inevitable, compromise between the popular passion, which, having once tasted of the sweets of choosing a master, will never after forego the gratification, and the state necessity, which renders it indispensable that the power, when once conferred, should be of the most despotic description.

101. In justice, however, to Charles X. and his last Administration, it must be observed, that the question of a change of ministers presented itself under a very different aspect to them from that which it wears in this country. With us, for above a century past, the rivalry of dynasties has ceased; no one but a few heated Radicals dreams of an entire change in the form of government. Immense efforts are frequently made by one party to displace another, but it is with no intention of altering the constitution, but only of dislodging their political opponents, and placing themselves at the head of government. But the case was very different in France. There the contest of dynasties and of forms of government not only continued, but was in full force. The Orléans family still in secret_nourished their pretensions to the throne, and not a few of the leading men in Paris were in their interest; the Napoleonists openly conspired to overthrow the Bourbons, and restore Napoleon II. and the tricolor

100. It is evident that the fall of Charles X. was immediately brought about by his refusal to submit to the first principle of a representative government that of taking his Ministers from the majority of the popular branch of the legislature. There can be no doubt that it is often very gall-flag; the Republicans held the threads ing to a sovereign to be obliged to do so, and that it seems very like depriving him of the liberty in choosing his confidential servants, which is accorded to the meanest of his subjects. Still it is the fundamental principle of a constitutional monarchy; and if a sovereign accepts such a throne, he is bound to conform to its conditions. The point at issue between Charles and the Chamber of Deputies was,

of a vast conspiracy, which extended over the whole country, embraced a considerable part of the army, and even some of the Guard, and was headed by men of the greatest talent and most revered names in France.

102. It is now known by the best of all evidence-the admission, after success, of their ablest and best-informed partisans-that during the whole Restoration the Liberal party were en

gaged in one vast conspiracy for the | Cicero risked his life in defence of the overthrow of the elder branch of the constitution of his country, for the house of Bourbon, that their parlia-Roman people to have chosen their mentary leaders were at its head, and consuls from among the companions of that, veiled under ceaseless protesta- Catiline. tions of inviolable respect for the royal family, was a secret design to extirpate them by all possible means, not even excepting the dagger of the assassin and the torch of the incendiary. With shame must history confess that the most renowned leaders of the Assembly, General Lafayette, M. Benjamin Constant, M. Manuel, M. Audry de Puyraveau, M. d'Argenson, and, in fact, all the chiefs of the Opposition, were the heads of the secret conspiracy, which had for its object to accomplish this end by these detestable means, and by the aid of this detestable hypocrisy. In these circumstances it was a very different thing for Charles X. to take his ministers from among these sworn and secret enemies, from what it would have been for George IV. to send for Earl Grey instead of Lord Liverpool. It was more analogous to the situation of Queen Anne, with whom a change of ministry from Marlborough and Godolphin to Bolingbroke and Harley was equivalent to, and the first step towards, a change of succession from the Hanoverian to the Stuart family; and the risk of such a substitution was probably not less than it would have been, in the days when

*

"La Charbonnerie s'étendit en fort peu de temps dans tous les quartiers de la capitale. Elle envahit toutes les écoles. Je ne sais quel feu pénétrant circula dans les veines de la jeunesse. Chacun gardait le secret, chacun se montrait dévoué. Les devoirs des Charbonniers étaient d'avoir un fusil et cinquante cartouches, d'être prêts à se dévouer, d'obéir aveuglément aux ordres de chefs inconnus. Il existait alors un comité parlementaire dont M. de Lafayette faisait partie. Lafayette averti du secret de leurs efforts, consentit à entrer dans la Charbonnerie. Il entra dans la Haute Vente, et parmi ses collègues de la Chambre les plus hardis le suivirent. Les choses en vinrent au point que, dans les derniers jours de l'année 1821, tout était prêt pour un soulèvement à la Rochelle, à Poitiers, à Niort, à Colmar, 'à Neuf-Brisach, à Nantes, à Béfort, à Bordeaux, à Toulouse. Des Ventes avaient été créées dans un grand nombre de régiments, et les changemens même de garnison étaient, pour la Charbonnerie, un rapide moyen de propagande. Le comité supérieur, chargé de tous les préparatifs du combat, déploya une acti

103. But admitting all this-conceding that the Liberal party were irrevocably alienated from the Bourbons, and leagued_together in secret, by every means, legal or illegal, to effect their overthrow-still it is not the less apparent that the King committed a signal and fatal mistake in inducing the conflict on the ground which he actually assumed. He took his stand upon his prerogative; he insisted upon his right to choose his ministers without control, as Charles I. had done upon his right to appoint officers to the militia without the concurrence of Parliament. In form, and according to the letter of the constitution, he was entitled to do so; in substance and reality he was not. Even if there had been no doubt on the subject, it would have been wise to have tried the experiment of dividing the Liberal party, by taking their leaders into office, before perilling all upon the irrevocable issue of the sword. Great is often the effect of such a transposition upon the ideas of men. Power is a very different thing when wielded by ourselves, and when exercised over us by others. Many who go to church to scoff, remain to vité extraordinaire. Trent-six jeunes gens reçurent l'ordre de partir pour Befort, où devait être donné le signal de l'insurrection. Ils partirent sans hésitation, quoique convaincus qu'ils marchaient à la mort. Les bases de la constitution de l'An III. étaient adoptées, et les cinq directeurs du Gouvernement Provisoire furent MM. de Lafayette, Corcelles père, Koechlin, d'Argenson, Dupont de l'Eure: c'est-à-dire, un homme d'épée, un représentant de la Garde Nationale, un manufacturier, un administrateur, un magistrat. Manuel usa de son influence sur quelques-uns d'entre eux, et notamment sur M. de Lafayette, pour les dissuader du voyage de Béfort; toutefois il partit, et le 1er Janvier 1822, à quelques lieues de Béfort, la chaise de poste qui transportait le Général et son fils fut rencontrée par une voiture où se trouvaient MM. Corcelles fils et Bayard. Eh bien! quelles nouvelles?' 'Tout est fini, tout est perdu, Général.' Lafayette, désesperé, changea de route et retourna à Lagrange, sa maison de campagne."-LOUIS BLANC, Histoire de Dix Ans du Règne de Louis Philippe, i. 96, 99.