A Narrative of the Events which have taken place in France from the Landing of Napoleon Bonaparte on the first of March, 1815, till the Restoration of Louis XVIII, etc

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WILLIAMS'S EVENTS IN FEANCE. A NARRATIVE OF THE EVENTS WHICH HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN FRANCE FROM THE Hantitng of jBlapoIeon Bonaparte On the First of March, 1815, till the Restoration of Louis XVlll. 8&tnj an account of the State of Soeietg ano Public ©pinion at that perioo. BY HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS. CLEVELAND: &Qt HButTOtoS Brothers Company, publishers — m dccc Seben ano Jiftg (Copies reprinteci for tlje JSttrroiris Brothers Œompang bg John HJEtlson ano Son, at the t&nibersitg Press, Œambrtoge, 1894- No.

Letter I

Mt Dear Sir, Paeis' Apri1' 1815" If in the list of moral maxims anythinghad been left unsaid upon the evil of procrastination, this would be a fit occasion to add something to the stock of luminous observations made on that subject since the beginning of time. But why have you furnished me with a sad example of the truth of these precepts ? Why, when the Eng lish hastened in multitudes to Paris, have you de layed your journey from week to week, till it can no longer be accomplished ? Although divided from each other by a geogra phical space of only a few short leagues,, at what an immeasurable distance were the two countries which we inhabit separated by the ascendancy of that Implacable Will which had placed a barrier between the nations more insurmountable than the wall of China ! You will easily believe that I saw with pleasure the arrival once more of those groups of travellers who speak my native language, who remind me of the scenes of early life, who conjure up those images of the past which no heart recals without emotion, and which " breathe a second spring."

But amidst those successive crowds, why have I not seen the friend of my youth ? Why have your chariot-wheels tarried, till I can no longer urge you to come, although I believe you would incur no personal danger by so doing ? Our re-installed emperor is extremely mor tified at the precipitation with which the English visitors fly from his dominion. It may indeed be observed, that in our paroxysms of political madness in this country we have usually imagination enough to blend a little variety in our proceedings ; and therefore the English having been once detained, was probably the very reason why they had no such measure again to apprehend, since its folly and impolicy had been amply recognized. The English might, therefore, have applied to themselves the observation made long since by M. de la Fayette to the people, when they wanted the oath of the first federation to be repeated : " Mes amis, le sermentn'est pas une arriette, qu'on joue deux fois."

Fear, however, is very subject to reason amiss; the English have departed, and you will naturally defer your visit till the end of the present dynasty, which to me -excludes not the hope of seeing you, perhaps ere long, in Paris. In the mean time I shall trace, as you desire, in a series of letters, the events which are passing before me, and which you will one day give to the public, if you con sider my sketches as worthy its attention. I have been often asked by my countrymen of late, why I have so long discontinued to describe the scenes which are passing around me ? I have perhaps done wrong, since I may at least pretend to be qualified for the task, inasmuch as it respects a knowledge of the subject, — I who, during my residence in Paris, have witnessed all the successive phases of its revolutions, who have so long marked the list of its remembrances, its calamities, its triumphs, and its crimes !

But the iron hand of despotism has weighed upon my soul, and subdued all intellectual energy. The Chevalier de Boufflers used to call Bonaparte " le cochemare de l'univers," the night-mare of the world ; and indeed the idea of the consequences with which those were menaced who ventured to collect forbidden materials for history, was sufficient to chill this sort of courage. We long believed the tyranny of Bonaparte to be con firmed, while now, persuaded that his new usurpation will not be durable, I shall no longer hang my harp upon the willows, and despair of the future. I shall begin with the second volume of Napo leon's history, or, to use the words of Madame de Stael, of Bonaparte's adventures, leaving the first volume to a future period, or an abler historian. It would indeed be quite impossible for me, in the present agitation of my mind, to "begin at the beginning."

I partake the common feeling ex perienced by all who have witnessed the French Revolution, that of an insuperable repugnance to returning on the past. When we reflect on all we have seen and suffered in this country, the soul recoils from such a host of fearful recollections, and we experience a moral sentiment which has perhaps some kind of analogy to the physical sen sation described by Shakspeare, when he says, " The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into ever}' brain." Connected with this sentiment, those who have witnessed the Revolution feel also a sort of weari ness of the memory of what is past. If the suc cession of time be measured by that of events, we have lived, not years, but ages of revolutionary life, and we are tired of the retrospect. In one word, I cannot prevail with myself to go back farther in my narration than the first of March, 1815.

Before I begin, however, let me say a few words of myself; which I shall do with all possible brev ity, this being, when we talk of ourselves, the first merit with others. You write to me in something like Italics, as if to give force to reproof, " you tvere a Bonapartist." I shall answer this accusa tion by pleading guilty. Yes, I admired Bona parte; I admired also the French revolution. To my then youthful imagination, the day-star of liberty seemed to rise on the vine-covered hills of France only to shed benedictions on humanity. I dreamt of prison-doors thrown open, — of dun geons visited by the light of day, — of the peasant oppressed no longer, — of equal rights, equal laws, a golden age, in which all that lived were to be happy. But how soon did these beautiful illu sions vanish, and this star of liberty set in blood !

How just was the reflection of Monsieur Gorani at the time of revolutionary horrors, " Je connaissais les grands, mais je ne connaissais pas les petits." You, however, are not of the number of those who deny that liberty was formed to bless and dignify mankind, because she has fallen on " evil days and evil tongues." When Bonaparte first appeared on the political horizon, I was not yet cured of enthusiasm. He presented himself to the world as fighting the battles of liberty — and by what splendid victories did he maintain her cause in Italy ! What mo desty in his demeanour, when, at his return, he made his solemn entry into Paris, and was received at a public audience by the Directory ! As he passed through the crowded streets, he leaned back in his carriage, and seemed to shrink from those acclamations which were then the voluntary offering of the heart, and were such as he has since been unable, with all his power, to purchase.

I saw him decline placing himself in the chair of state which had been prepared for him, and seem as if he wished to escape from the general bursts of applause. Allow me to observe also, en passant, that I had been assured he was an enthusiastic admirer of Ossian; and when I found that he united to a noble simplicity of character, and a generous disdain of applause, a veneration for Ossian, this circumstance silled up the measure of my admiration. I did not then know that Bonaparte valued Ossian only for his descriptions of battles, like the surgeon who praised Homer only for his skill in anatomy. Even the events of the 18th Brumaire, al though somewhat mysterious, were insufficient to shake my credulity. He had dissolved with vio lence the national representation, but it was only to repress the Jacobins and prevent the return of terrorism.

When he was named First Consul, I believed that liberty was about to flourish fair under his auspices, and that France was hence forth to be great and happy. It seemed as if, in a better sense, it might be said of him that " the world was made for Cæsar." All the circum stances of the Revolution had combined to effect his elevation. The nation was wearied of the great experiment it had made in politics, and for which it had paid so dear. The cruel abuses of liberty, the horrible outrages of the reign of terror were still present to every memory, and even the republicans themselves despaired of a republic. The nation, conscious, at the same time, of the wrongs it had inflicted on the race of its kings, in despair of impunity, added to its offences a new injustice, and believing that the Bourbons would never forget the past, wished to separate them forever from the future.

In this situation of things, and in this disposi tion of the public mind, Bonaparte took possession of the o-overnment. He had so noble and so marvellous a part to act, that it was difficult to be lieve he would mar all by his performance. It might have been expected that he would have had the good taste, as well as morality, to avoid the beaten track of vulgar and ordinary ambition ; and that he would seek, by other paths, the prize of purer glory. He soon, however, corrected the defect of discernment in those who had thus .au gured of his genius and his virtue. The rapid successive gradations to the consulate for life, and thence to the imperial purple, dispelled all illu sion, and displayed the undisguised truth. " Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all." Thus ends my confession : and, passing over the memorable interval of time since the coronation of Napoleon the Great, by Pope Pius the Seventh, in the metropolitan church of Notre Dame, let me lead you towards the little vessel on which Bonaparte lately anchored in the bay of Juan.

Letter II

April, 1815. A feeling of surprize, but a very slight degree of inquietude, was excited at Paris by the intelligence that Bonaparte had landed, on the first of March, at the little town of Cannes, on the coast of Provence, attended by a few followers. His arrival was talked of, less as a subject of alarm, than of speculation with respect to the motives of his expedition. It was generally believed that his appearance in France would be very transient, and that he only meant to open to himself a passage through Piedmont into Italy, to join his brother-in-law, Joachim king of Naples. It seemed indeed singular that he should have landed in Provence, in order to form a junction with Murat at Rome ; but as no clearer motive suggested itself to the public mind, this intention was generally admitted.

In the mean time, Bona parte hastened to enlighten the inhabitants of the south with respect to the motive of his visit, declaring that the same sentiments of tenderness and humanity which had induced him to lay aside his imperial authority, at the time when the allies were in possession of Paris and masters of France, — and to which abdication he was com pelled by the hope that peace would be restored to this unhappy and desolated country, — had now operated on him to forego the enjoyment of tranquillity, and forsake the rock in the midst of the waves, on which he had suffered exile, in order to rouse the country to a due sense of its inglorious sufferings, and to avenge its wrongs. He promised to restore to France the boundary of the Rhine, to confirm to the people the chart they had adopted, and to reform all the errors of which the reigning powers had been guilty, in their misinterpretation of the articles that had been already discussed.

The tenderness professed by Bonaparte for the people, and his sympathy for their sufferings under the reign of the Bourbons, raised a smile on the lips of the Parisians ; yet there were per sons who felt their vain-glory awakened by the promises of again extending their frontier to the Rhine, and obliging the Prussians to fall back from the lately ceded territory. The almost uni versality of France, however, which had groaned so long under the rod of Napoleon, and had blessed its deliverance from his sway, still considered him as the enemy of public and individual repose, and exulted in the hope that this abun dant excess of tenderness was about to expose him to the punishment so long due to his crimes ; for of his speedy capture there appeared no reasonable cause of doubt. Whilst the members of the government encour aged this belief in the public, they were not less aware that it was no ordinary disturber with whom they had to deal.

It was deemed expedient to assemble all the authorities, civil as well as military. On the 8th March, the Chambers of Peers and of Deputies, which had been pro rogued on the last day of the past year to the first of May, were called together for the instant dis patch of business; and the king issued a royal proclamation, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was declared a traitor and a rebel for having intro duced himself by force of arms into the department of the Var, enjoining all civil and military governors, and even private citizens, to lay hands on him (de lui courir sus), and drag him before a court-martial to identify his person and put the law in force against him. The same punishment was enjoined against the military, and other per sons of whatever rank, who shall have accompa nied or followed Bonaparte in his invasion of the French territory, unless they submitted within the term of eight days.

In this crime were in cluded by the same proclamation, to be punished as its accomplices and adherents, as tending to change the form of government and provoke civil war, all administrators civil and military, the chiefs as well as those employed in the said administrations, payers and receivers of the pub lic monies, even such private citizens as should directly or indirectly give aid and assistance to the invader. While the government at Paris was thus em ployed, Bonaparte, who had assumed the modest title of Lieutenant-General in the name of his son, had trusted but feebly to the effects of his own proclamation. Finding that the provincials near the coast, little solicitous about the liberty and equality he promised to introduce, and still less so for the boundary of the Rhine, were not eager to volunteer their services in his cause, he col lected his small band of six hundred men and be gan his march towards Lyons, on his well known and favourite system, d'aller en avant.

Bonaparte's march to Lyons, without cavalry, artillery, and other accessories of martial array, appeared to the Parisians so chimerical, that they judged it as impracticable that he should reach Lyons as that he should march to Paris. They began to wonder that the news of his being taken and destroyed with his small host, of which they were all well assured by private correspon dence, was not officially confirmed. The government, which had received no such conformation, published the assurances of General Marchand, who commanded Grenoble, which was the south ern military depot, of the safety of this great station and the fidelity of the troops. The garrison of Grenoble construed the word "fidelity" into a different meaning from that of its commander. Bonaparte presented himself at their gates ; they fraternized immediately, and not only delivered up the depot, but the general by whom they were commanded.

The seventh regiment of the line, commanded by Colonel La Bedoyere, had marched out and joined Bona parte on the road between Vizille and Grenoble. Thus M. de la Bedoyere was the first officer who submitted to the invader, and may boast the pre eminence in treason. Madame de la Bedoyere, of an ancient and honourable family, was so affected by her husband's treachery, that, taking her children with her, she forsook his house, fled to her relations, and left him to enjoy alone his guilty triumph. The division in families is not one of the least evils of civil discord. Its serpents writhe upon the calm bosom of domestic life, and transform all its joys to bitterness. How many near relations have been within this little month thus rudely torn from each other! There is a point in public dissension and public calamity, when the rankled mind revolts at opposition, and the affections of private life seem light in the great balance of destiny.

"Pour toi, de qui la main seme ici les forfaits, Et fait naitre la guerre au milieu de la paix ; Ton nom seul parmi nous divise les families, Les epoux, les parens, les meres, et les filles ; La discorde civile est par-tout sur ta trace, Assemblage inoui de mensonge et d'audace; Tyran de ton pays, est-ce ainsi qu'en ce lieu Tu viens donner la paix ! " &c. * The Elbean band, which had hitherto since its landing been wandering among the mountains of the Var and the departments of the Lower Alps, was now swelled into the appearance of an army by the junction of the troops at Grenoble. Gen eral Marchand, invited by Bonaparte to retake his command, answered, that during his reism as Emperor he had served him with fidelity ; that, 1 Voltaike: Mahomet. released from this duty by his abdication, he had sworn allegiance to the existing government ; and, presenting his sword, surrendered himself as a prisoner, declaring that he would never be a traitor.

"General," said Bonaparte, "I acknowl edge your services ; I have always looked on you as a true soldier ; I see your position, and do not wish you to act contrary to your conscience. Take back your sword ; go to Paris, and tell your king that I shall soon visit him in the capital, and will treat him with all the consideration due to his virtues and his rank." The defection of the garrison of Grenoble roused into exertion the government, which had seemed to repose on the terror of its proclamations. Monsieur, the king's brother, and the Duke of Orleans, accompanied by Marshal Macdonald, repaired to Lyons in order to put that city in a state of resistance. Lyons was garrisoned by about two thousand regular troops, and its great population seemed to offer every means of retard ing at least the progress of the invader; but the only weapons found to arm the inhabitants were three thousand muskets, and these were for the most part unfit for service.

The aspect of the city was equivocal with respect to its loyalty, and the regular troops were decidedly in savour of the invader. His appearance before Lyons awakened the cries of " Vive l'Empereur ! " from the soldiers, in which they were joined by the populace, and he entered without resistance that capital of the Gauls. The French princes retreated to Cler raont in Auvergne, and soon after returned to Paris. Bonaparte had now traversed the country from the coasts to almost the centre of France, without resistance and without firing a shot ; and, having enthroned himself at Lyons, threw off the humble air of Lieutenant-General of his son, as well as that of tenderness and sympathy for the sufferings of the nation ; and, unable to withstand the saluta tions of " Vive l'Empereur !

" by the army, began to issue his imperial decrees with the protocole of "Napoleon, by the grace of God and the constitutions of the empire, Emperor of the French, &c." Several changes having been made during his absence in the persons composing his imperial administration both civil and military, he began by decreeing that in the judiciary bodies of every rank such arbitrary changes were to be regarded as null and void ; that all generals and officers who had taken service in the army or navy, and who had been emigrants, should give in their dis mission and return to their homes ; that the whit' cockade and the order of St. Louis, of the Holy Ghost, and of St. Michael, should be abolished, and that the national three-coloured flag and cock ade should only be displayed; that the military establishment of the king should be suppressed ; that the goods and chattels of the princes of the house of Bourbon should be sequestrated; that the nobility and feudal titles were abolished ; that the emigrants who had entered with the king should quit the French territory ; and that the chamber of peers and deputies were dissolved.

These imperial dispositions appeared to Bona parte, no doubt, necessary to reunite the parti sans of his old government ; but he could not dissemble to himself that, however agreeable his return might be to the citizens who had revelled in the sweets and emoluments of subordinate power, he had not been happy in securing the assent and affections of any other classes of his subjects. Of this he had been duly informed during his residence in his island of Elba. Every vessel from France that touched his coast had gone laden with pamphlets, all filled with details of his crimes, arraigning him before the present and future ages, and written as if to console and avenge the nation, of which nothing is more re -markable than its physical courage and its moral cowardice, for the silence with which it had borne his oppression.

Nothing had been left unsaid ; many a terrible truth had been thundered in his ear ; many a foot had trampled upon the sick lion ; and the revolutionary maxim seemed entirely forgotten, " qu'il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas." The times were then past when the philosophers and the literati prophaned history, and the clergy Holy Writ, by their strange and grotesque applications. Bonaparte, conscious that his enchanter's rod was now broken, that he was no longer believed to be invincible, and that he was well known to be guilty, had recourse to new arts. He deemed it necessary to propose a voluntary descent from the height of his ancient dictatorship, and to declare himself the patron and popular chieftain of a free government. He concluded his decree of the suppression of the legislature, by ordering that the " electoral colleges of the departments of the empire should assemble at Paris in the course of next May, in an extraordinary assembly of the Field of May, in order to take the measures necessary to correct and modify our constitutions according to the interest and will of the nation, and at the same time to be present at the coronation of the empress, our very dear and wellbeloved spouse, and of our dear and well-beloved son."

On the news of the possession of Lyons by Bonaparte and his army, now become formidable by its numbers, consternation began to operate on the Parisian world in the inverse ratio of its former incredulity. The same magical power which had led this extraordinary personage from his island to the centre of France seemed no less potent to protect his further attempts if it was his intention to wing his way to Paris. There was, however, no supernatural agency in this business ; there was nothing even very aston ishing in this revolutionary phantasmagoria. It was scarcely to be imagined that Bonaparte would have thrown himself with so much rashness and precipitation into the midst of France with a handful of followers, and have attempted to trav erse a country through which, but a few months before, he had passed to his place of exile loaded with the execrations of its inhabitants, and, even under the protection of his European conquerors, compelled to seek at times his personal safety by assuming the meanest disguises ; it could scarcely be imagined that he would have ventured to trace back his steps through this country as a con queror, and have seated himself in the capital of the south, had he not depended on other forces than those of his followers, and assured to himself other means of success than the riches his Elbean sovereignty afforded.

Suspicions arose at Paris that there existed some strange neglect in certain departments of the administrations of govern ment. It was observed that not only the southern depot of Grenoble had furnished the invader with every implement of war, and that its garrison had shown a singular alacrity in declaring themselves traitors, but that Lyons had been left without defence or the arms necessary for the national guard. It seemed strange, also, that the fleet at Toulon had remained in the harbour, and that, were it merely to exercise the sailors, no cruise had taken place in the space that reaches from the isle of Elba to the shores of Provence. It is certain that the conspiracy had been carried on during some months, with more good fortune than address. The discovery of one part of the plot was accidental, or, to borrow the pious ejacula tion of the new minister of war, seemed to have been made by the miraculous interposition of Providence.

Marshal Mortier, Duke of Treviso, who com manded the troops stationed in the north, had left Paris to return to his headquarters at Lisle, when he met on the indirect road he had taken a body of troops, consisting of about ten thousand men, on their march to Paris. The astonished Marshal demanded where they were going, and found that they had received orders to march upon Paris, to save the city from pillage and rescue the king from the hands of the populace. He examined the orders, saw they were forgeries, and ordered his soldiers to march back instantly to their quarters. The town of La Fere, in Picardy, was a northern military d6p6t, under the command of M. D'Aboville. The General Lefebre Denouettes had entered this town with troops drawn from the garrison of Cambray, under the command of General Lallemand and his brother, demanding military accommodation for two thousand men.

The commander of La Fere observed that there was somewhat singular in this march ; and having soon obtained proofs of the traitorous intentions of these generals, he put his garrison, at an early hour, in order of battle, and answered the invitation of joining Bonaparte by the cry of " Vive le Hoi I " in which he was joined by his troops. The rebel generals sought their safety in flight, but were soon after taken. Thus Bonaparte's project was neither rash nor ill-concerted. While he advanced by rapid marches to Lyons, for which due preparations had been made by the removal of all obstacles, and while the garrison of Grenoble assisted his arrival, his partisans in the north were to furnish him with arms, lead on the troops under their com mand, and take possession of Paris. The acci dental meeting of a powerful detachment of the northern army by Marshal Mortier, and the firm ness of D'Aboville at La Fere, disconcerted this part of the plan, but at the same time convinced the government that the conspiracy was not con fined to the south and to the troops that accom panied Bonaparte.

Letter III

Apell, 1815. The discovery of a conspiracy before it be con summated is generally considered as the destruc tion of the enterprise for which it has been formed; but the present plot extended too far to be en dangered by the failure of any single ramification. Bonaparte's triumphant march ceased to be mar vellous, when it became known that the army was entirely devoted to him ; that he had upon his arrival issued his imperial orders to the French troops in all the various stations in the kingdom ; that everywhere the military obeyed him with alacrity ; and that this army, like a snowball, aug mented as it rolled on. The most considerable part of the French army, and particularly the imperial guard, had never joined in the execrations with which their chief had been loaded by the French nation.

His name though proscribed, as well as the imperial eagle, were bound to their minds with indissoluble affec tion ; and as they attributed to themselves a share in his military glory, so they had continued to sympathize in his disgrace. Such were the honourable feelings of a great number; but the most considerable part, who felt not this sort of elevation, remembered, like the Israelites in the Wilder ness, the flesh-pots of Egypt, and looked back with regret on those halcyon days when German bur gomasters and substantial and well-prepared re pasts awaited their arrival at a town or a village after the march or combat of the day ; and rapine and riot, at the expense of the invaded countries, filled up the intervals of what they styled the career of glory. A numerous class of the French army, under the influence of those immoral habits, felt that Bonaparte's banishment had been the death-blow to their hopes and their enjoyments.

With fond regret those heroes of the eagle looked back on the auspicious days in which, till interrupted by the return of peace and the Bourbons, plunder and carnage had been the business of their lives. " Their occupation now was gone, — all pomp and circumstance of glorious war ! " The whole of the military were thoroughly imbued with the idea that they alone constituted the nation, that they were the first if not the only order in the state, and that the rest of the population were the Ilotes, or, in their modern military phraseology, "peguins." x These Spartans now found themselves sunk in importance, thrown by as incumbrances, and saw with indignation that their profession was dishon oured by the peguins, who under the name of na tional guards had devoted themselves to the protection of their country as armed citizens.