The substance of some letters

Preface

THE foîlowing letters are composed from the same journal, which furnished the writer with the materials of a very active and detailed correspondence with several of his intimate acquaintance, some of whom, being members of the legislature, were interested in receiving intelligence more correct than could be obtained through the usual channels, at a time when the total perversion of some facts, the partial selection of others, and the unfair construction put upon such as found their way to the public press, aided a delusion, to which, in a greater degree, perhaps, than to the exertions of ministerial influence, must be attributed the parliamentary majorities, that enabled the government to undertake the late war against France.

The writer, during his residence at Paris in the months of April, May, June and July, of the last year, was a spectator of those events and appearances m France, which the journals and orators of his own country pretended to pourtray, but which formed a complete contrast with every thing said or written by the agents or supporters of the Bourbon cause, both in England and on the continent. Feeling persuaded that from a minute description of that which was passing before his eyes, the conclusion to be drawn could not fail to be favourable to the principles which he had been taught to consider the only safe and honourable guides of an English politician, and being shocked at the misrepresentations upon which the policy of the British cabinet appeared to him to be entirely founded, he thought it his duty, as it must be that of every individual, however insignificant, to lose no opportunity of transmitting to his friends a detailed,

ÏV PREFACE.

account of passing transactions, accompanied with comments, which he conceived must be allowed naturally to arise from an unprejudiced view of those transactions, and which he therefore supposed he might take the liberty of intruding upon his correspondents.

In treating the subject of the foreign policy of the Britrish government, the writer could not but frequently touch upon the public character and conduct of those of his fellow-countrymen with whom that policy is immediately connected, and particularly of the minister on whom it may be supposed more especially to depend.

Having, in the course of several visits to the continent, been forced into the conviction, that our relations with the European cabinets are carried on by such agents as must insure the commission of many errors, and that the real character of our principal representative, during the late momentous events, is very diiferent from that which the pretensions of himself and his partisans, together with the fortuitous concurrence of some unforeseen successes, would induce us to believe, he has judged it necessary not to coniine himself to the vague censure of measures, without any notice of individual conduct or opinion, but has ventured to characterise certain men, in such terms as he thought suitable to their public career, and not exceeding the freedom with which, in his country, it has always been judged allowable to speak of dangerous or mistaken politicians.

It would have been easy for him to have erased from liis publication the personal animadversions of his private correspondence ; and, by so doing, he would have exempted it from the obloquy and retaliation of a very powerful and prevalent portion of those, who are the most likely to become his readers. He has no resentments to gratify, and not having to complain of ingratitude for services which he never performed, nor of the refusal of favours for which he never applied, he is actuated by none of the animosities arising from disappointment or neglect. He has been placed in'none of the circumstances, which, in party writers, not unfrequently give rise to the malignity, which Tacitus himself allovi^s is the more pernicious, as it is sometimes

PREFACE. V

mistaken for a bold impartiality, and an honest liberty •of speech. He has spoken of men in their public capacity, merely because he is persuaded that tlse line of policy, which his government has thought fit to pursue, has depended on the positions and propensities of two or three statesmen — nay, even of one preponderating politician, to a degree so unusual, that the adoption of the " shadow fighting/' declared by a great moral poet to be no less inefficacious than safe, would have been a base compromise of the interests of the cause, to which all his endeavours, such as they are, are now devoted, and will be for ever applied.

Could the writer of these letters suppose that they would receive any weight from the subscription of his name, he would not hesitate to designate his person as distinctly as his opinions; but, not presuming to indulge any such persuasion, he trusts entirely to the truth of his statements for that credibility, whicli an author of more importance might obtain partly from his personal testimony.

He must also advertise the reader, that he has been exceedingly cautious in inserting the names of any of those individuals, who, when they condescended to communicate witii him, had probably no wish nor expectation of appearing before the public in the character of his informants. He should think it too ill a compliment to them, if he did not owe it to himself, to say, that, as he never admitted any of their anecdotes to a place in these letters, without a conviction of their authenticity, either from the character of the narrator, or from circumstances corroborative of their probability, he is afraid of no investigation to which they may give rise.

Having premised thus much, the writer finds it necessary to subjoin, that his purpose in publishing these letters is similar to that w hich guided his pen in their original composition, and that, if he succeeds in winning over even one honourable man from the ranks of those who still approve, as they once supported, the late war against national independence, he sliall think himself amply repaid for any exposure of personal or literary reputation. Declarations of patriotism he leaves to those,

VI PREFACE,

to whose professions their country may listen with delight, because much profit may he expected from their services; but he trusts his assertion will not, by those to whom he is known, be thought unbecoming or misplaced, if he ventures to say, that no motive less pure than an anxiety to stamp with its true character a system of aggression, whose apparent success may serve for a precedent fatal to our own liberties, has prompted him to undertake a task, which he laments that some other person, more qualified than himself, has not been enabled, from similar opportunities, to peiform.

It is not impossible that the reader may be startled at the variableness, or, if the expression may be used, the shadow of changing, discoverable in the conduct and characters here described, and, as it may seem to him, in the opinion of the writer; who, if the inconsistencies be in himself, and not in his subject — if his story has varied, except with varying facts, must submit, and is contented, to be condemned. He must, however, be judged by those whom local and cotemporary knowledge has enabled to decide upon his statements, and who shall be proved to have had immediate means of information, equal, at least, to his own. He asks no fairer trial — but he shall appeal from any critic not so qualified. He may easily be supposed to have thought sometimes better, sometimes worse, of the personages before him, and, by communicating his present impressions, he conceived that, so far from perplexing his correspondents, he enabled them to collect one important truth — the partial fluctuation of character and opinion in the Parisian world.

Before this preface is concluded, notice should be taken of a work, entitled "^ A Narrative of Events which have taken place in France, from tlie landing of Napoleon Bonaparte, on the 1st of March, 1815, till the restoration of Louis XVIII."' — which work, though it made its appearance after this collection of letters had been prepared for the press, seemed to the writer to add to the urgency which he imagined to exist, for attempting to disabuse his fellow-countrymen, on the subject of the return and last reign of the Emperor Napoleon. Cer-

PREFACE. Vil

tainly the author of that work and the writer of these letters did not look at the same side of the shield^ and it is possible that one city in the diversities of civil discord may, like Pope's single nymph, present many moral portraits.

" All how unlike each other, all how true."

But it must be permitted him to declare solemnly, that, were it not notorious that the composer of the Narrative was a spectator of the events she describes, he would not hesitate to aver, that she had employed the optics of the editors of some ministerial journal, rather than those eyes which beamed with delight at the dawn of continental freedom, and communicated tlieir animation to so many admirers of revolutionary France.

It may be necessary to add, that, although that narrative will appear to be directly contradicted by many positions contained in these letters, yet not a line of them was written in the contemplation of such a controversy, nor, except in one solitary instance, where the assumed fact was too important to be left uncontradicted, has been retouched, in consequence of any statements advanced by the above author.

The writer concludes this preliminary notice, by stating, that, at the advice of his friends, he has reprinted some public documents in the original French, and that he trusts the interest which they must command, from being, in some measure, an official account of the last reign of the Emperor, and from having, as yet, been only very partially communicated to his fellow countrymen, will excuse the appendix, which they compose at the end of this volume.

SUBSTANCE

OF SOME

LETTERS

WRITTEN FROM PARIS DURING THE LAST REIGN

OF THE

EMPEROR NAPOLEON.

LETTER I. Brussels, tSpril - 1815

MY DEAR

A SON of an English archbishop once told me, that uiring the siege of Gibraltar his father was dancing at the balls i Paris. Since the commencement of the revolution war the am ùositiés of governments seem to have been communicated to '"vie nations, and, especially as far as concerns France and England, each individual has become a belligerent. The mutual (;;vilities of their diplomatists at neutral courts have long been (Ilropped, and, without any attention to the want of civilized inyercourse or the decency of christian communion, the war has bet a carried on, to the scandal of the barbarous and Mahometan \v rrld, even by their residents at Pera and Tihiran. It may not e easy to say with whom this pitiful practice commenced, bu personal experience has taught me that the worthy members of our missions have carried it into most full and painful effet 10 much so, indeed, as to exclude from the benefit of their rotection, and to refuse the light of their countenance to those uud guilty of holding even parley with any Frenchman, whof . attentions, like those of the devil, seem to convey a suppositio of preaptitude for such evil communications ; and to be judk .: j therefore sufficient cause for excommunication from the soci 'y of ail the good, the loyal, and the true. Certainly, howev. neither the

A

^ LETTERS FROM PARIS.

interests of humanity nor of policy have gained by this universal diffusion of antipathies : for although it might have served the turn of our statesmen in 1793 to represent every Frenchman a man-eater and an atheist, whose existence was incompatible with modern civilization ; yet for us, who are not the cotemporaries of Legendre and Danton, to treat all our neighbours as if they were the accomplices of those miscreants, cannot be just nor profitable : it cannot be just, because the Frenchmen of the revolution are no longer to be found in France; it cannot be of se vice to our policy, for such a persuasion must originate from ftL entire ignorance of existing national character, the knowledge of !,vhich I presume to be the first and most indispensable quality m those concerned in the management of political intercourse. I will say nothing of the selfish and presumptuous feelings, the bad passions and prejudices which the encouragement OÏ such a hatred tends naturally to produce and nourish in the ap.nd of the whole nation. Fortunately the humanity of ■Ei-f.: ishmen has thwarted every ejffort to diffuse this savage principl^^^, as far as relates to persons and circumstances which are no: V'ilhin the controul of politicians either at home or abroad : their .generous nature associates itself with none so easily as with their .vmmediate neighbours; nor does war ever assume so civilized a form as in the contest with the armies of France : our soldier considers that he does not serve the cause of his country or his king by cherishing principles of animosity and revenge agains', the individuals of the opposing enem}^ ; whom, in spite of the •uggestions of the brave warriors of the two Houses and their ariplauding journalists, they look upon as men very much like îht'fnselves, engaged in a stated duty, with a certainty of subsistt nee, and a hope of advancement and reward.

Those who ha/e lived much with our arm)^ know there is a liberality in the o pinions of our military men relative to France, which would scarcely be tolerated in some ministerial circles, or perhaps m i.i^e walls of parliament. This liberality at all times renders thci: victories more dear to us, because less dangerous. Were th rv- liable to adopt all the prejudices of cold-blooded politicians, and, sinking the citizen in the soldier, to receive the niaxims of a corrupt court as their only rule; of civil conduct, then ihde'" ( might we tremble at their prowess. But, since the example c the army of James, we need not fear that British soldiers si ulcl ever be true to tyranny ; nor, to serve their monarch, bttviv' themselves. The horror which it has been the fashion eh her to feel or to affect at the name of a Frenchman, without being taktn off the nation at large, has been latterly concentrated <T c' accumulated upon the head of Napoleon ; whom, after exhauoug every opprobrious epithet before unapplied ta any potentate, it was at last agreed to designate as the Enemy of the human race^ a title belonging, par excellence,^ to the Evil One, and calculated to inspire a sort of blind terror and universal detestation of this Satanic personage. Posterity will hardly know how to reconcile the proverbial courage and sense of ovir countrymen with the expression of such fears as they will find in the predictions and revelations of the preachers and politicians of the present age; who, by helping out the Apocalypse with an anagram, behold in this warrior sometimes the Horned Beast, at others ApoUyon himself.

They will smile at the complacency with which we contemplated the dethronement of the Abomination of Abominations as the accidental good which was to be blown to us by this ill wind, as well as at the facility with which, sacrificing our former interpretations to our present interests, our prophecy to our politics, forgetting our faith as our circumstances improved, we strained every nerve to prevent the accomplishment of our own prediction, and in the indiscriminate fury of our opposition to the devil, took up the cudgels for him with whom he had been, in every British heart, so long allied— the Pope. The children of the present generation have been taught to start at the name of Bonaparte as if he was in the bush ; our colleges and academies have given prizes to thosq who should best pourtray his crimes. The painter has sketched a countenance to correspond with the fancied features of treason, murder, cruelty, and pride. Not the terrors of a degenerate Roman could have beheld the imp-begotten Attila under an aspect so hideous. The pious from their pulpit prayed for that resignation, patience, and humility under this scourge of God, which were recommended from the benches of parliament as the true christian virtues necessary for those who were to be borne along without a murmur by the current of events, to bear all trial of taxation, and to be content with the mean instruments through whom (the help and cunning of man being altogether of no avail) they might, in the appointed time and hour, work out their salvation. Such was the general feeling ; to be insensible to which was looked upon as the proof of a hardened mind, perverted by, or perhaps already associated with, wickedness. It is true, and more strange, that in order to complete the monster which the world never saw, there were many amongst us who arrayed him in all bad qualities, contradictory and inconsistent ; interweaved with the giant vices all the baser imperfections of humanity, and, to justify their hatred and their fear, denounced him as a coward and a fool. These epithets were designed to take all pretext for admiration from those, who per-

* By way of eminence.

versely gazed with feelings not unmixed upon the most extraordinary career ever recorded in the annals of ambition. They were employed to deepen the reprobation already attached to those who saw in Napoleon Bonaparte a fortunate soldier— of no less capacity than inclination for conquest and dominion — undaunted — persevering — unsatisfied — with most of the vices and virtues of conquerors — comparable to any of the great names of history by his exploits, inferior to some of them by the failings which a cotemporary view enables us to see and prompts us to condemn, superior to most of them as being untai-nished by those monstrous deeds which characterized the age or habits of other heroes.

It was in vain that the imputed poisonings, and assassination of single captives, became an idle tale, abandoned at last by those who gave to them their original credit. The Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, was still to be charged with withdrawing from his throne and his myriads in arms, to strangle an unarmed British sailor ; and it was still to be accounted a want of patriotism for an Englishman to regard him in any other light than the murderer of his countryman. The fall of this Dagon by no means terminated the persecution of his name, nor of his imputed worshippers. It was discovered, that not France, not her capital itself, could show a single evidence that her usurper had ever contemplated to make her beautiful or great. The hatred and fear which his power might have inspired, and which might be supposed to drop with It, were transferred to the alleged friends of his system and principles ; but the charges of cowardice and folly were renewed ; he was a coxcomb, profligate, empty and vain ; a mortal of an ordinary mind and mould; daring and impetuous, nothing more — good-natured, it is true, and communicative, but quite on the usual level; a fit companion for the simple and younger classes of mankind; a man about whom the world had been much mistaken ; or, as a midshipman of the Undaunted said, in a letter to his friend, " all in the wrong," That he had found admirers was unaccountable. Those who knew him most, liked him least ; a vulgar familiarity constituted all the charm of his converse, which, after all, could have no effect upon the open heart of plain honesty, averse to the blandishments of a knave. Not content to visit with indignation those v/ho did not regard him as the weakest and the most dangerous being in existence, yet without any power of attraction ; as the most insignificant and the most to be dreaded of mortals, yet never to be listened to for a moment ; it was found usefiil to assert, that the admiration of such a character which was to be so much deprecated, did not in fact exist. A scandalous story had been told of the

LETTERS FROM PARIS. Ô

inclinations manifested towards this worthless personage by the crew of the frigate which conveyed him to Elba. It was too true and undeniable, that the officers of that ship had listened to the voice of the tempter. For this the commanding officer had received his reward. What was his reception at home, in return for having bestowed upon an acknowledged Emperor the honours of sovereignty, and for not having employed those torments of insult by which the fallen monarch might feel his dignity to be dying, it would be little to the credit of our admiralty to record.

But this reception was not judged a sufficient punishment ; the mistaken conduct of that cajoled though gallant officer was to be publicly arraigned, and a channel of accusation was found in the pages of a literary journal, devoted usually to better purposes, A half official memoir was ushered into the world, compiled I have good reason to believe partly from the papers of the military gentleman, who, from his residence at Elba, was a judge more competent, but I now think hardly so fair as the above-mentioned midshipman of the Undaunted, and who, unless his colouring was heightened by other hands, made it seems the discovery of that youth, that his charge was nothing above the usual run, a very commonplace-minded man, imprudent and unguarded to an excess, incapable of keeping a secret in love, or war, or politics ; with a flux of talk both as to past, present, and to come, quite unbecoming and incompatible with real grandeur. Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, when I knew him, was a most worthy, sensible man ; but it is just possible that being accustomed to Lord Cathcart, and the dignities of this world, he was astounded perhaps at first, and then disgusted, at finding so much of human frailty, of the weaknesses of common life, in a general and a sovereign. The colonel might have been but little surprised to have seen him shoot a grenadier a day. There would besides have been more of dignity in guarding such a Nero ; but to find that his prisoner had none of the trappings of legitimate tyranny ; that he could not discover one trait in his manner or conversation which affected or gave him a superiority over himself; that he talked freely and playfully on the passages of his former life, and sometimes of his future destination and even projects ; that he took no pains to conceal any weakness or error; that he was, in short, altogether sucK a being as himself j this was intolerable, and would be so to any eye accustomed to contemplate all objects at a certain angle, and to mistake elevation of position for height of stature. Had Napoleon been haughty, morose, reserved, important, and pompous, it would have been easy to recognize and appreciate those kingly characteristics ; and to have foreseen and provided against an eflSort to recover his crown. I was not therefore much astonished to hear and read the judgment formed by the guardian officer: (difficult as it was to reconcile that judgment, to my mind no erroneous, with what I formerly knew of Sir Neil Campbell ;) but

1 was truly surprised at some representations contained in the journal alluded to, which I knew could not proceed from his pen, as they furnished the most extraordinary example extant of that species of writing called by Voltaire the oeconomic style, or an expedient falsification of facts.

The sailors of the Undaunted frigate are stated to have resisted all that cajolement which succeeded with the officers ; and to have refused a gratuity offered them at disembarkation bj' the Emperor, in terms both rude and contemptuous — " they would take none of Mr. Bonaparte's money." Could the writer of the memoir have invented both the refusal and the speech? He should have known that the sailors did receive about four hundred louis d'ors from Napoleon ; and that the boatswain, in iheir qame, addressed him on the quarter-deck, in a short harangue, in which he thanked his honour^ and -wished hhn long life and prosperity in the island of Elba^ and better hick another time. The fact is notorious to every man on board the frigate at the time ; as to the fiction, I know not to what extent it has been believed or spread.

I should not have mentioned either the one or the other, had I not thought it worth while to give a good sample of the dialectic employed by some pretended champions of the church and state. I exhort you, therefore, to label this pious fraud, as Fra Paoli did his dagger — stillo della sancta chiesa.

The Quarterly Review has not, as I hear, found more buyers nor admirers since it has undertaken to write down Bonaparte, from authentic documents. Twice has it tried its hand this way; a third time it may show that the conquest of Egypt, of Italy, of Austria, of Prussia, of Poland, the foundation of empires and kingdoms, fifty victories, a thousand monuments of laws, and arts, and arms, all are fictions, unreal, non-existent, and invented, like the pretended death of Charles I. by the jacobins of France, to serve the purpose and animate the wicked zeal of the enemies of the true Porphyrogeniti — the legitimate two or three for whom the modern many were made, and are permitted to exist. The triumph of these gentlemen was at its height : the carcase butchers had carved out the nations at Vienna ; Lord Castlereagh having given Saxony to Prussia, Poland to Kussia, Italy to Austria, Genoa to Savoy, and Hildeshcim to Hanover, was returned to receive the thanks of a grateful British parliament.— Napoleon reappears — the stability of the system of our great statesman, and its fitness to that portion of Europe called

France, are at once apparent, by the resistance offered to the invader: but his lordship, though a little sick and hurt, is not abashed : he speaks for four hours, as if nothing had happened. The night, indeed, of that famous speech so stuck with laughter as was never goose zuith lard,^ as Harrington sa3's of my Lord Epimonus-de-garriila^ s harangue, did give hopes to the malicious. It was thought impossible that the patience of parliament should any longer endure. The most tried members, who, daring a long course of court complaisance, had never slept nor smiled at a minister's speech, now nodded outright, or bore their murmurs to the club : Westminster- hall and St. James's-street were vocal to the complaints even of the humble servaiits of the treasury. The most devoted followers began to suspect that the character which one accident had made considerable, another accident might again reduce to its original and tried insignificance. The rats were looking for their holes : some said they had begun to run. But it seems this house is not yet to fall. His lordship has declared ^is sitting permanent ; and having that immovability which success stamps with the name of perseverance, but which, under other circumstances, is termed obstinacy, or desperation, is resolved to bet hii blue ribbon against Napoleon's crown. Now, feeling no interest, and not thinking myself involved in the playing of this match ; being convinced likewise that the threatened war is not, as far as England is concerned, national, but ministerial ; I have resolved to pursue a journey which I have long projected, and to revisit Paris, in spite of the event which has driven so many of my countrymen, with so much speed and so little urgency, from that capital. I have still hopes of peace, but very little. A saying of the Duke of Wellingtoa circulates at Brussels, that he will be in Paris in three months ; and his Grace is not known either to boast or to threaten often in vain. The Prince of Orange has buckled on his armour, and has forbidden the English under his command to say that Bonaparte is a great man. By some accident, no one talks of his father, nor seems to recollect that he was one of the last batch of kings.

His majesty the King of the Netherlands is a sound not yet familiar to Brussels, where the garlands are yet green that adorned his triumphal entry. The town-house and some few houses in the park are hung with stripes of orange-bunting; and by the edge of the canal leading to the palace of Lachen is a triumphal arch, recording the reception of Guiielmus Primus. These machines, and the placard of that article of the Vienna Congress by

• Oceana, p. 120.

which the Netherlanders were transferred to the house of Nassau, are the only evidences that put you in mind of the new monarchy. If you mention the king, they ask you whether you allude to the old Prince, or to Louis XVIII. His majesty is very kind and condescending: — he received a ball from the citizens' wives the other day, and honoured a puppet show, I speak literally, with his presence. Yesterday he was at the theatre : it was ill-lighted, and worse attended ; not a person of apparent gentility was present, to greet the new sovereign. Some thirty stood up in the pit when he entered ; but when the play closed, every body moved off without ceremony, not waiting for his majesty's exit. The roj'al box was surmounted with a paper crown, like that of Shakspeare's Duke of York, which those in the upper lodge looked as if inclined to clip ; and the tongues of the lions, supporters of the arms, seemed contrived by the artist to loll out at the bauble above, with an air of archness not justified by heraldry or loyalty. To an eye accustomed to the substantial shows of English roj/alty, the state of the Dutch monarch cannot but appear most pitiful ; and connected with the very general notion, that, such as it is, it will dissolve at the first thunder of the French cannon, nothing can be less enviable than the condition of William the First — ridiculous as Bubb Doddington on his late peerage — a young king, but an old man.