Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V

This is the common-sense view of the subject. If the constitution contained the necessary guarantees of political freedom and security of life and property; if it was to be looked to as the permanent settlement and bulwark of the liberties of France, and considered as a final and decided arrangement, liable indeed to be improved by the joint consent of the sovereign, and the legal representatives of the subject, but not to be destroyed by any or all of these authorities, it was a matter of utter unimportance, whether the system was constructed in the form of a charter granted by the King, or that of conditions dictated to him by the subject. But if there was to be a retrospect to the ephemeral existence of all the French constitutions hitherto, excepting that under which Buonaparte had enthralled the people, then perhaps the question might be entertained, whether the feudal or the revolutionary form was most likely to be innovated; or, in other words, whether the conditions attached to the plan of government now adopted, was most likely to be innovated upon by the King, or by the body who represented the people.

Assuming the fatal doctrine, that the party in whose name the conditions of the constitution are expressed, is entitled to suspend, alter, or recall them, sound policy dictated, that the apparent power of granting should be ascribed to the party least able and willing to recall or innovate upon the grant which he had made. In this view of the case, it might be reckoned upon that the King, unsupported, unless by the Royalists, who were few in number, unpopular from circumstances, and for the present divested, excepting nominally, of the great instrument of achieving despotic power, the undisputed command, namely, of the army, would be naturally unwilling to risk the continuance of his authority by any attempt to innovate upon those conditions, which he had by his own charter assured to the people. On the contrary, conditions formed and decreed by the Senate of Buonaparte, might on the popular party's resuming the ascendency, be altered or recalled by the chambers with the same levity and fickleness which the people of France, or at least those acting as their representatives, had so often displayed. To give permanence to the constitution, therefore, it was best it should emanate from the party most interested in preserving it, and least able to infringe it; and that undoubtedly, as France stood at the time, was the sovereign. In Great Britain, the constitution is accounted more secure, because the King is the source of law, of honour, and of all ministerial and executive power; whilst he is responsible to the nation through his ministers, for the manner in which that power is exercised. An arrangement of a different kind would expose the branches of the legislature to a discordant struggle, which ought never to be contemplated as possible.

The zealous liberalists of France were induced, however, to mutiny against the name under which their free constitution was assigned them, and to call back Buonaparte, who had abolished the very semblance of freedom, rather than to accept at the hands of a peaceful monarch, the degree of liberty which they themselves had acquired. The advantages which they gained will appear in the sequel.

Thus setting out with varying and contradictory opinions of the nature and origin of the new constitution, the parties in the state regarded it rather as a fortress to be attacked and defended, than as a temple in which all men were called to worship.

PARTIES IN FRANCE

The French of this period might be divided into three distinct and active parties – Royalists; Liberals of every shade, down to Republicans; and Buonapartists. And it becomes our duty to say a few words concerning each of these.

The Royalists, while they added little real strength to the King by their numbers, attracted much jealous observation from their high birth and equally high pretensions; embroiled his affairs by their imprudent zeal; embittered his peace by their just and natural complaints; and drew suspicion on his government at every effort which he made to serve and relieve them. They consisted chiefly of the emigrant nobles and clergy.

The former class were greatly reduced in number by war and exile; insomuch, that to the House of Peers, consisting of one hundred and seventy, and upwards, the ancient nobles of France supplied only thirty. The rest were the fortunate maréchals and generals, whom the wars of the Revolution had raised to rank and wealth; and the statesmen, many of whom had attained the same station by less honourable means of elevation. The old noblesse, after their youth had been exhausted, their fortunes destroyed, and their spirits broken, while following through foreign countries the adverse fortunes of the exiled Bourbons, beheld the restoration, indeed, of the monarchy, but were themselves recalled to France only to see their estates occupied, and their hereditary offices around the person of the monarch filled, by the fortunate children of the Revolution. Like the disappointed English cavaliers, they might well complain that though none had wished more earnestly for the return of the legitimate prince, yet none had shared so little in the benefits attending it. By a natural, and yet a perverse mode of reasoning, the very injuries which the nobility had sustained, rendered them the objects of suspicion to the other ranks and parties of the state. They had been the companions of the King's exile, were connected with him by the ties of friendship, and had near access to his person by the right of blood. Could it be in nature, it was asked, that Louis could see their sufferings without attempting to relieve them; and how could he do so in the present state of France, unless at the expense of those who occupied or aspired to civil and military preferment, or of those who had acquired during the Revolution the national domains which those nobles once possessed? Yet the alarm was founded rather on suspicion than on facts. Of the preferment of emigrants in the army, we shall speak hereafter; but in the civil departments of the state, few of the old noblesse obtained office. To take a single example, in the course of eleven months there were thirty-seven prefects nominated to the departments, and the list did not comprehend a single one of those emigrants who returned to France with Louis; and but very few of those whose exile had terminated more early. The nobles felt this exclusion from royal favour, and expressed their complaints, which some, yet more imprudently, mingled with threatening hints, that their day of triumph might yet arrive. This language, as well as the air of exclusive dignity and distance which they affected, as if, the distinction of their birth being all that they had left to them, they were determined to enforce the most punctilious deference to that, was carefully remarked and recorded against the King.

The noblesse were supposed to receive particular encouragement from the princes of the blood, while, upon the whole, they were rather discouraged than brought forward or distinguished by Louis, who, as many of them spared not to say, was disposed to act upon the ungenerous maxim of courting his enemies, and neglecting those who could not upon principle become any thing save his friends. They did not, perhaps, make sufficient allowance for the great difficulties which the King incurred in governing France at so critical a period.

THE CLERGY

The state of the Clergy is next to be considered. They were, generally speaking, sincerely attached to the King; and had they been in possession of their revenues, and of their natural influence upon the public mind, their attachment would have been of the utmost consequence. But without this influence, and without the wealth, or at least the independence, on which it partly rests, they were as useless, politically speaking, as a key which does not fit the lock to which it is applied. This state of things, unfortunate in many respects, flowed from a maxim adopted during the Revolution, and followed by Buonaparte, who had his reasons for fearing the influence of the clergy. "We will not put down the ecclesiastical establishment by force; we will starve it to death." Accordingly, all grants and bequests to the Church had been limited and qualified by so many conditions and restrictions, as to intercept that mode of acquisition so fruitful in a Catholic country; while, on the other hand, the salary allowed by the State to each officiating curate was only five hundred livres (£26, 16s. 8d.) yearly. No doubt each community were permitted to subscribe what they pleased in addition to this miserable pittance; but in France, when the number of those who care for no religion at all, and of those whose zeal will not lead them the length of paying for it, is deduced, the remainder will afford but a small list of subscribers. The consequence was, that at the period of the restoration, many parishes were, and had been for years, without any public worship. Ignorance had increased in an incalculable degree. "We are informed," was the communication from Buonaparte to one of his prefects, "that dangerous books are distributed in your department." – "Were the roads sown with them," was the answer returned by the prefect, "your Majesty need not fear their influence; we have not a man who would or could read them." – When we add to this the relaxed state of public morals, the pains taken in the beginning of the Revolution to eradicate the sentiments of religion, and render its professors ridiculous, and the prevalence of the military character, so conspicuous through France, and so unfavourable to devotion; and when it is further remembered that all the wealth of the Church had fallen into the hands of the laity, which were fast clenched to retain it, and trembling at the same time lest it should be wrested from them – the reader may, from all these causes, form some notion of the low ebb of religion and of the Church in France.

The disposition of the King and Royal Family to restore the formal observances of the Romish Church, as well as to provide the suitable means of educating in future those designed for the ministry, and other religious institutions, excited among the Parisians a feeling of hatred and contempt. It must be owned, also, that though the abstract motive was excellent, there was little wisdom in attempting to bring back the nation to all those mummeries of Popish ceremonial, which, long before the Revolution, only subsisted through inveterate custom, having lost all influence on the public mind.

This general feeling was increased by particular events. Alarming tumults took place, on the subject of enforcing a rule unworthy of Christianity and civilisation, by which theatrical performers are declared in a constant state of excommunication. The rites of sepulture being refused to Mademoiselle Raucour, an actress, but a person of decent character and morals, occasioned a species of insurrection, which compelled from the government an order for interring her with the usual forms.76

The enforcing of the more regular observation of the Sabbath, an order warranted alike by religion and good morals, gave also great offence to the inhabitants of the capital. The solemn obsequies performed for the death of Louis XVI. and his unfortunate queen, when their remains were transferred from their hasty grave to the royal mausoleum at Saint Denis, a fraternal action, and connected with the forms of the Catholic Church – was also construed to the King's prejudice, as if, by the honour paid to these poor relics, he had intended to mark his hatred of the Revolution, and his recollection of the injuries he had sustained from it.77 Some honours and attention bestowed on the few surviving chiefs of La Vendée, were equally the subject of misrepresentation. In short, whatever Louis XVIII. did, which had the least appearance of gratifying those who had lost all for his sake, was accounted an act of treason against freedom and the principles of the Revolution.

None of the circumstances we have noticed had, however, so much effect upon the public feeling as the fear which prevailed, that Louis, in his veneration for religion and its members, might be led to form some scheme of resuming the Church lands, which, having been confiscated by the decrees of the National Assembly, were now occupied by a host of proprietors, who watched, with vigilant jealousy, incipient measures, which they feared might end in resumption of their property. Imprudent priests added to this distrust and jealousy, by denunciations against those who held Church lands, and by refusing to grant them absolution unless they made restitution or compensation for them. This distrust spread far wider than among the actual proprietors of national domains. For if these were threatened with resumption of the property they had acquired under authority of the existing government for the time, it was most probable that the divine right of the clergy to a tithe of the produce of the earth, might next have been brought forward – a claim involving the interest of every landholder and farmer in France to a degree almost incalculable.

It is plain, from what we have stated, that the Royalist party, whether lay or clerical, were so little in a condition to be effectually serviceable to the King in the event of a struggle, that while their adherence and their sufferings claimed his attachment and gratitude, every mark which he afforded them of those feelings was calculated to render his government suspected and unpopular.

THE JACOBINS

Whilst the Royalists rather sapped and encumbered than supported the throne to which they adhered, their errors were carefully pointed out, circulated, and exaggerated, by the Jacobin, or as they called themselves, the Patriotic party. This faction, small in numbers, but formidable from their audacity, their union, and the dreadful recollection of their former power and principles, consisted of ex-generals, whose laurels had faded with the Republic; ex-ministers and functionaries, whose appointments and influence had not survived the downfall of the Directory; men of letters, who hoped again to rule the state by means of proclamations and journals; and philosophers, to whose vanity or enthusiasm abstract principles of unattainable liberty, and undesirable equality, were dearer than all the oceans of blood, and extent of guilt and misery, which they had already cost, and were likely again to occasion. It cannot be denied, that, in the discussion of the original rights of humanity, and constitutions of society, several of this party showed distinguished talent, and that their labours were calculated to keep up a general love of liberty, and to promote inquiry into the principles upon which it is founded. Unfortunately, however, their theoretical labours in framing constitutions diverted their attention from the essential points of government, to its mere external form, and led them, for example, to prefer a republic, where every species of violence was practised by the little dictator of the day, to a limited monarchy, under which life, person, and property, were protected. The chiefs of this party were men of that presumptuous and undoubting class, who, after having failed repeatedly in political experiments, were as ready as ever again to undertake them, with the same unhesitating and self-deceptive confidence of success. They were never satisfied even with what they themselves had done; for as there is no end of aiming at an ideal perfection in any human establishment, they proceeded with alterations on their own work, as if what Butler says of religion had been true in politics, and that a form of government

"was intendedFor nothing else but to be mended."

Danger did not appal the sages of this school. Many of them had been familiar with, and hardened to the perils of the most desperate revolutionary intrigues, by their familiar acquaintance with the springs which set each in motion, and were ready to recommence their desperate labours with as little forethought as belongs to the labourers in a powder-mill, which has exploded ten times during their remembrance, and destroyed the greater number of their comrades. In the character of these self-entitled philosophers and busy agitators, vanity as well as egotism were leading principles. The one quality persuaded them, that they might be able, by dint of management, to avert danger from themselves; and the other rendered them indifferent respecting the safety of others.

During the government of Buonaparte, this Jacobinical party was repressed by a strong hand. He knew, by experience of every sort, their restless, intriguing, and dangerous disposition. They also knew and feared his strength, and his unscrupulous use of it. The return of the Bourbons called them into life, like the sun which thaws the frozen adder; but it was only to show how they hated the beams which revived them. The Bourbon dynasty, with all the remembrances it combined, seemed to this faction the very opposite to their favourite Revolution; and they studied with malignant assiduity the degree of liberty afforded by the national charter, not in order to defend or to enjoy it, but to discover how it might be made the vantage-ground for overthrowing both the throne and the constitution.

Carnot and Fouché, formidable names, and revolutionists from their youth upward, were the ostensible leaders of this active party, and most of the surviving revolutionists rallied under their standards. These agitators had preserved some influence over the lees of the people, and were sure to find the means of augmenting it in the moment of popular commotion. The rabble of a great town is democratical and revolutionary by nature; for their vanity is captivated with such phrases as the sovereignty of the people, their sense of poverty and licentious fury tempted by occasion for uproar, and they regard the restraints of laws and good order as their constant and natural enemies. It is upon this envenomed and corrupted mass of evil passions that the experimental philosophers of the Revolution have always exercised their chemical skill. Of late, however, the intercourse between the philosophers of the Revolution and this class of apt and docile scholars had been considerably interrupted. Buonaparte, as we have hinted, restrained with a strong hand the teachers of the Revolutionary school; while, by the eclat of his victories, his largesses, and his expensive undertakings, in which many workmen were employed, he debauched from them great part of their popular disciples, who may be said, with the inconsequence and mutability belonging to their habits, principles, and temper, to have turned imperialists, without losing their natural aptitude to become Jacobins again on the next tempting opportunity.

BUONAPARTISTS – THE ARMY

The party of Imperialists or Buonapartists, if we lay the army out of view, was small and unimportant. The public functionaries, whom the King had displaced from the situations of emolument which they held under the Emperor – courtiers, prefects, commissioners, clerks, and commissaries – whose present means and future hopes were cut off, were of course disobliged and discontented men, who looked with a languishing eye towards the island of Elba. The immediate family connexions, favourites, and ministers of the late Emperor, confident in the wealth which most of them had acquired, and resenting the insignificance to which they were reduced by the restoration of the Bourbons, lent to this party the activity which money, and the habit of political intrigue, can at all times communicate. But the real and tremendous strength of the Buonapartists lay in the attachment of the existing army to its abdicated general. This was the more formidable, as the circumstances of the times, and the prevailing military character of the French nation, had raised the soldiers from their proper and natural character of servants of the state, into a distinct deliberative body, having interests of their own, which were in their nature incompatible with those of the commonwealth; since the very profession of arms implies an aptitude to a state of war, which, to all other ranks in the state, the army itself excepted, may indeed be a necessary and unavoidable evil, but never can be a real advantage.

The King could not be accused of neglecting to cultivate the affections, soothe the prejudices, and gratify the wishes of the army. The fact is, that the unprecedented difficulties of his situation forced him to study how to manage by flattery, and by the most imprudent indulgences and favours, the only part of his subjects, who, according to the rules of all well-governed states, ought to be subjected to absolute authority. Every effort was made to gratify the feelings of the troops, and the utmost exertions were made to remount, re-establish, and re-clothe them. Their ranks were augmented by upwards of 150,000 prisoners of war, whose minds were in general actuated by the desire of avenging the dishonour and hardship of their defeat and captivity, and whose presence greatly increased the discontent as well as the strength of the French army.

While the King cultivated the affections of the common soldiers with very imperfect success, he was more fortunate in attaching to himself the maréchals, whom he treated with the utmost respect and kindness. They were gratified by his attentions, and, having most of them some recent reason to complain of Napoleon, it is possible, that had they possessed absolute, or even very extensive interest with the army, that disturbance in the state of the nation which ensued, could not possibly have taken place. But while Napoleon had preserved towards the maréchals the distance at which a sovereign keeps subjects, he was often familiar with the inferior officers and soldiers, and took care to keep himself in their eye, and occupy their attention personally. He desired that his generals should resemble the hilt of the sword, which may be changed at pleasure, while the army was the blade itself, and retained the same temper, notwithstanding such partial alteration. Thus, the direct and personal interest of the Emperor superseded, in the soldier's bosom, all attachment to his lieutenants.

THE ARMY – STATE OF PARTIES

It would be wasting time to show reasons, why the French army should have been attached to Napoleon. They could not be supposed to forget the long career of success which they had pursued under his banner, the pensions granted in foreign countries which were now retrenched, and the licensed plunder of their Emperor's unceasing campaigns. At present, they conceived the King proposed to reduce their numbers so soon as he could with safety, and imagined their very existence was about to be at stake.

Nor was it only the selfish interests of the army which rendered them discontented. The sense of honour, as it was called, or rather the vanity of military ascendency and national aggrandisement, had been inspired by Buonaparte into all classes of his subjects, though they were chiefly cherished by his companions in arms. According to their opinion, the glory of France had risen with Buonaparte, and sunk with him for ever; not, as they fondly contended, through the superior force of the enemy, but by the treachery of Marmont, and the other generals whom Napoleon trusted. This sentiment passed from the ranks of the soldiers into other classes of society, all of which are in France deeply susceptible of what is represented to them as national glory; and it was again echoed back to the soldiers from fields, from workshops, from manufactories. All began to agree, that they had received the Bourbons from the hands of foreign conquerors; and that the King's reign had only commenced, because France had been conquered, and Paris surrendered. They remembered that the allies had declared the restoration of the ancient family was combined with the restriction of France within the ancient limits; and that, accordingly, the first act of Monsieur, as lieutenant of the kingdom, had been to order the surrender of upwards of fifty fortresses beyond the frontiers, which Buonaparte, it was supposed, would have rendered the means of re-acquiring the conquests, of which fortune or treachery had for a time bereft him. The meanest follower of the camp affected to feel his share in the national disgrace of losing provinces, to which France had no title save that of military usurpation. The hope that the government would at least endeavour to reconquer Belgium, so convenient for France, and which, as they contended, fell within her natural boundaries, served for a time to combat these feelings; but when it was perceived plainly that the government of France neither could nor would engage in external war, for this or any other object, the discontent of the army became universal, and they might be pronounced ripe for any desperate enterprise.