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. With an account of the state of society and public opinion at that period

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KAROW COLLECTION

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JOSEPH NCOONOUGF

Letter II

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, Bonaparte 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 compelled 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 Khine, 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 persons who felt their vain-glory awakened by the promises of again extending their frontier to the Khine, and obliging the Prussians to fall back from the lately ceded territory. The almost universality 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 abundant 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 encouraged 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 prorogued on the last day of the past year to the first of May, were called together for the instant dispatch of business; and the king issued a royal proclamation, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was declared a traitor and a rebel for havino^ introduced himself by force of arms into the department of the Yar, 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 persons of whatever rank, who shall have accompanied or followed Bonaparte in his invasion of the

French territory, unless they submitted within the term of eight days. In this crime were included 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 public monies, even such private citizens as should directly or indirectly give aid and assistance to the invader.

While the government at Paris was thus employed, 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 collected his small band of six hundred men and began his march towards Lyons, on his well known and favourite system, (Taller 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 lie should march to Paris. They began to wonder that the news of his beino" taken and destroyed with his small host, of which they were all well assured by private correspondence, was not officially confirmed. The government, which had received no such conformation, published the assurances of General Marchand, who commanded Grenoble, which was the southern 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 Bonaparte 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 preeminence in treason. Madame de la Bedoyere, of an ancient and honourable family, w\as 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 discords civile est par-tout sur ta trace, Assemblage inoui de mensonge et d'audace; T^^ran 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. General Marchand, invited by Bonaparte to retake his command, answered, that during his reign as Emperor he had served him with fidelity ; that,

^ Voltaike: Maliomet.

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 acknowledge 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 retarding 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 favour of the invader. His appearance before Lyons awakened the cries of ^' Vive I'Ernpereur ! " 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 Clermont 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 salutations of "^ Vive TEmpereur ! " 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 dismission and return to their homes 3 that the white 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 cockade 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 Bonaparte, no doubt, necessary to reunite the partisans 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 auctions 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 remarkable 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, ^^ qitil ny 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 assenihly 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 well-beloved 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 Avas, however, no supernatural agency in this business ; there was nothing even very astonishing in this revolutionary phantasmagoria.

It was scarcely to be imagined that Bonaparte would have throw^n himself with so much rashness and precipitation into the midst of France with a handful of follow^ers, and have attempted to traverse 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 conqueror, 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 sovereignt}^ afforded. Suspicions arose at Paris that there existed some strange neglect in certain departments of the administrations of government. It was observed that not only the southern dep6t 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 ejaculation of the new minister of war, seemed to have been made by the miraculous interposition of Providence.

Marshal Mortier, Duke of Treviso, who commanded 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 depot, 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 Roi 1 " 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 command, and take possession of Paris. The accidental meeting of a powerful detachment of the northern army by Marshal Mortier, and the firmness 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 confined to the south and to the troops that accompanied Bonaparte.

Letter III

The discovery of a conspiracy before it be consummated is generally considered as the destruction of the enterprise for which it has been formed ; but the present plot extended too far to be endangered by the failure of any single ramification. Bonaparte's triumphant march ceased to be marvellous, 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, augmented 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 affection ; 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 Wilderness, the flesh-pots of Egypt, and looked back with regret on those halcyon days when German burgomasters and substantial and well-prepared repasts 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 w^hole 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, '^ "peqidmr ^ These Spartans now found themselves sunk in importance, thrown by as incumbrances, and saw with indignation that their profession w^as dishonoured by the peqidns, who under the name of national guards had devoted themselves to the protection of their country as armed citizens. This military civic spirit, encouraged by the government, had only served to increase the discontent of the regular troops ; so that it required no extraordinary effort in Bonaparte's agents to inspire them with the hopes of the return of Saturnian times.

Bonaparte was well apprized of the situation of the army ; and of its obedience to his mandate he was no less assured. The chiefs the most devoted to him were of course the only persons initiated in the secret, and to their discretion was entrusted the care of awakening and fostering in their sol-

^ '^J. am sorr}'-, '^ said a minister to Marshal L , '^ that,

after having long waited for you, we are seated at table before you arrive.'^ ^'I should have come earlier," replied the Marshal, ^'but I have been detained by some pequins." ^' Pequins! " exclaimed the company, '' what are pequins 7 '' ^^ Oh, you know," rejoined the Marshal, ^^we o,^ jpequins all that is not military.'' ^^ Yes," said the minister, '' comme nous autres nous appellons iiiilitaire, tout ce qui n'est pas civilJ^

26 NARRAXIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE.

diers the glorious hope of new achievements, new honours, and new spoils. With such auxiliaries it required no great effort of courage in Bonaparte to attempt seizing the reins of empire. Every necessary precaution had been taken to secure his safety, from the place of his landing to Lyons. The national guard, indeed, of a little town into which he had entered on his passage assured the prefect that they could secure him with the greatest ease. The prefect answered that he had received no orders, and refused the proffered aid.

This military conspiracy had some auxiliaries in other classes of the community. There still existed the remains of a party in France which had during a short time wielded the sceptre as despotically as Bonaparte himself. This was the faction of the Jacobins, once no less powerful with the insignia of the red-cap than Napoleon with his imperial crown, of whom some one, seeing him pass in pomp through the streets of Paris, observed, " C'est Kobespierre a cheval." The Jacobins had long been reduced to such death-like silence that the race was deemed extinct. Bonaparte had received the first rudiment of his political knowledge in their school, and been denominated by high authority their child and champion. On his first entrance into power he

KARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 27

adopted the system of fusion, and employed such of the chiefs of the faction as had escaped the scaffold. He was, however, too prudent not to keep the party in proper subjection while he continued to practise their favorite maxim, the secret of all their power, " that of daring.'' -^ The exile of some of the most turbulent leaders among the populace of the Fauxbourgs, by Bonaparte's orders, had reduced the rest to silence ; and though they murmured at his injustice, they dreaded and worshipped his power.

This class was at present too obscure to excite any apprehension in the government; with the exception of a few chiefs, they were to be found only in the poorest of the labouring tribe. They had, however, been useful on some occasions; and in revolutions no means of power ought to be neglected. Subsidies were necessary to raise these dormant allies into action; and subsidies were found by the relations and friends of Bonaparte, and largely distributed by their emissaries.

The tranquil possession of Lyons by Bonaparte, and the increase of his army by deserters from the royal cause, now excited the most serious apprehensions in Paris. The government gave as-

^ Osez was declared by one of the Jacobin coryphees, in a report to the Convention, to be the secret of all revolutions.

28 KAERATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE.

surances that measures were taken, if Bonaparte should attempt the road of Paris, to cut him off ; and preparations were made to collect a formidable army at Melun, a town on the Seine, at the distance of ten leagues from Paris ; and another at Montargis, a few hours' march from Fontainebleau. It was asserted that he would soon be placed within two fires, since Marshal Nej had already reached Lons le Saulnier, where an army was stationed, amounting to twelve or fifteen thousand men, with which he was about to fall on his rear. This officer, who was called the Prince of Moskwa from the active share he had taken in the combat near that river, had in an effusion of loyalty repaired to the Tuileries, and proffering his services had assured the king, on receiving the command of this important station, that he would bring Bonaparte to Paris in an iron cage. To which the king replied, with mild dignity, that this was not what he required, and that he only desired of the marshal to drive back the invader. The Prince de la Moskwa took his leave of the king, carried with him a million of livres for the pay of the troops, and departed.

Though it was greatly apprehended that the spirit of disaffection had pervaded the army in general, it was hoped that a part would yet be found " faithful among the faithless." The knowledge that armies were placed in front, on the flanks, and in the rear cheered the drooping spirits of the Parisians, who, applauding the loyalty of the national guard rather than confiding in their prowess, saw with satisfaction the departure of the marshals to head the armies, and particularly of the Prince de la Moskwa, whose assurances to the king were cited in his own phraseology, that he would bring the Sovereign of Elba in an iron cage to Paris.

Bonaparte meanwhile, after haranguing the people of his good city of Lyons, took an affectionate leave of the citizens and proceeded on his way to Paris. Traversing Macon, Tournus, and Autun, he reached Auxerre, where he was immediately joined by Marshal Ney, with his whole division, and whom he had ordered to hoist the three-coloured flag. A part of this division was well disposed toward the king, and the troops would probably have done their duty had they not been surprized into treason. Marshal Ney issued at Lons le Saulnier the following proclamation : —

" Officers and Soldiers ! the cause of the Bourbons is for ever lost. The lawful dynasty, which the French nation has adopted, is about to ascend the throne. It is to the Emperor Napoleon alone, our sovereign, that belongs the right of reigning over our fine country, &c. Soldiers, I have often led you to victory, I will now lead you to join that immortal phalanx which the Emperor Napoleon is conducting to Paris, and which will be there in a few days ; and there our hopes and our happiness will be for ever realized. \

" Vive I'Empereur ! (Signed) " The Prince op Moskwa.'*

Such have been the vicissitudes of opinion and the changes of the political creed of individuals amidst the various phases of the French Kevolution, that considerable allowances may be made for many ; but no morality however lax, no charity however lenient, can forbear stigmatizing with eternal ignominy the conduct of certain actors in this turbulent drama : at the head of this black column must be inscribed the name of the Prince of Moskwa. The services of this marshal were not demanded ; they were offered with an exuberance of zeal for the royal cause, and his ardour was repressed rather than excited by the king, to whom he gave with eagerness the sacred pledge of his honour.

When the tidings of this fatal disaffection reached Paris, when it was known that this great division of the army, on which all the public hope reposed, had gone over to the invader, horror and despair filled every bosom. Unavailing execrations against such black perfidy as that of Marshal Ney hung upon every lip ; and the red iron, with which he is condemned to be marked in history, seemed a slight compensation for the wrongs of his injured country.

Napoleon entered Fontainebleau on the 20th March, at four in the morning. He learned that the Bourbons had quitted Paris, and that the capital was free. With his accustomed superstition for particular days, he remembered also that this was the birthday of the King of Rome ; he therefore departed immediately, determined to enter Paris that evening.

Thus in the space of three short weeks did this daring soldier transfer the seat of empire from his rocky exile to the palace of the Tuileries. We saw him seated on his throne, and we believed it to be almost a delusion of our senses. The rapidity of his march appears a prodigy of which history offers no example ; the enterprise seems unparalleled in all that is great and daring ; and his pacific triumph bears the stamp of the general assent of the nation. Such conclusions would, however, be most erroneous. There was nothing miraculous in his journey. He was quietly conveyed to Paris in his caleche, drawn by four posthorses which he found prepared at every relay ; and it required but ordinary courage to advance through a country where all that was hostile to his purpose were defenceless and unarmed, and all that could have opposed his progress hailed him with acclamations of transport. But if the triumphal march of Napoleon Bonaparte from the coast of Provence to the capital of France presents, when investigated in its details, no marvel to the imagination, it teaches at least a most tremendous lesson to mankind ; it adds a new page of instruction on the danger of military influence ; it shows us that no other ties are so powerful as those which bind the soldier to his chief. What the French army would have called rebellion was resistance to the voice of their general. The military ravagers of other countries can never become the civic defenders of their own. Their bosoms beat high with the unextinguishable hope of what mankind, in its hour of madness, has agreed to call by the name of glory. They had acquired under Bonaparte that fatal ascendant which led them to consider even their own country as their conquest. Careless of its miseries, forming a class apart from their fellow-citizens, like the Janizaries of the east or the Pretorian bands of the Roman empire, they consulted only their own triumph, an d disposed of crowns and sceptres at their will. The land which gave them birth, and which they were destined to defend, they have covered with desolation, and have opened an abyss to France from which the heart recoils, and where the eye fears to penetrate.