Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
clothes, himself surprised by the everyday aspect of the place. Then,
when the officer of the firing party (for such the spectators now knew
it to be) saw whom it was he was to fire on, he became, it is said,
perfectly petrified; and a peer, one of the judges of Ney, the Duke de
la Force, took his place. Ney fell at the first volley with six balls
in his breast, three in the head and neck, and one in the arm, and in
a quarter of an hour the body was removed; "plain Michel Ney" as he had
said to the secretary enunciating his title in reading his sentence,
"plain Michel Ney, soon to be a little dust."
The Communists caught red-handed in the streets of Paris in 1870 died
with hardly less formality than was observed at the death-scene of the
Prince of the Moskowa and Duke of Elchingen, and the truth then became
plain. The Bourbons could not, dared not, attempt to carry out the
sentence of the law with the forms of the law. The Government did not
venture to let the troops or the people face the Marshal. The forms of
the law could not be carried out, the demands of revenge could be. And
if this be thought any exaggeration, the proof of the ill effects of
this murder, for its form makes it difficult to call it anything else,
is ready to our hands. It was impossible to get the public to believe
that Ney had really been killed in this manner, and nearly to this day
we have had fresh stories recurring of the real Ney being discovered in
America. The deed, however, had really been done. The Marshals now knew
that when the Princes fled they themselves must remain to die for the
Royal cause; and Louis had at last succeeded in preventing his return
to his kingdom amongst the baggage waggons of the Allies from being
considered as a mere subject for jeers. One detail of the execution of
Ney, however, we are told nothing of: we do not know if his widow, like
Madame Labedoyere, had to pay three francs a head to the soldiers of
the firing party which shot her husband. Whatever were the faults of the
Bourbons, they at least carried out their executions economically.
The statesmen of France, distinguished as they were, certainly did not
rise to a level with the situation either in 1814 or in 1815. In 1814,
it is true, they were almost stunned by the crash of the Empire, and
little as they foresaw the restoration of the Bourbons, still less
could they have anticipated the extraordinary follies which were to be
perpetrated. In 1815 there was less excuse for their helplessness, and,
overawed as they were by the mass of foes which was pouring on them to
complete the disaster of Waterloo, still it is disappointing to find
that there was no one to seize the helm of power, and, confronting the
Allies, to stipulate proper terms for France, and for the brave men who
had fought for her. The Steady Davoust was there with his 100,000 men
to add weight to their language, and the total helplessness of the older
line of the Bourbons had been too evidently displayed to make their
return a certainty, so that there is no reason to doubt that a
firm-hearted patriot might have saved France from much of the
degradation and loss inflicted on her when once the Allies had again got
her at their mercy. At-the least the Bourbons might have been deprived
of the revenge they sought for in taking some of the best blood of
France. Better for Ney and his comrades to have fallen in a last
struggle before Paris than to be shot by Frenchmen emboldened by the
presence of foreign troops.
Talleyrand, the most prominent figure among the statesmen, was away. His
absence at Vienna during the first Restoration was undoubtedly the cause
of many of the errors then committed. His ability as displayed under
Napoleon has been much exaggerated, for, as the Duke of Wellington said,
it was easy enough to be Foreign Minister to a Government in military
possession of Europe, but at least he was above the petty trivialities
and absurdities of the Bourbon' Court. On the receipt of the news of the
landing of Napoleon he really seems to have believed that the enterprise
would immediately end in disaster, and he pressed on the outlawing of
the man who had overwhelmed him with riches, and who had, at the worst,
left him when in disgrace in quiet possession of all his ill-gotten
wealth. But, as the power of Napoleon became more and more displayed,
as perhaps Talleyrand found that the Austrians were not quite so firm as
they wished to be considered, and as he foresaw the possible chances of
the Orleans family, he became rather lukewarm in his attention to
the King, to whom he had recently been bewailing the hardships of his
separation from his loved monarch. He suddenly found that, after a
Congress, the first duty of a diplomatist was to look after his liver,
and Carlsbad offered an agreeable retreat where he could wait till he
might congratulate the winner in the struggle.
Louis deeply resented this conduct of his Foreign Minister, and when
Talleyrand at last joined him with all his doubts resolved, the
King took the first opportunity of dismissing him, leaving the calm
Talleyrand for once stuttering with rage. Louis soon, however, found
that he was not the free agent he believed. The Allies did not want to
have to again replace their puppet on the throne, and they looked
on Talleyrand and Fouché as the two necessary men. Talleyrand was
reinstated immediately, and remained for some time at the head of the
Ministry. He was, however, not the man for Parliamentary Government,
being too careless in business, and trying to gain his ends more by
clever tricks than straightforward measures. As for the state into which
he let the Government fall, it was happily characterised by M.
Beugnot. "Until now," said he, "we have only known three sorts of
governments--the Monarchical, the Aristocratic, and the Republican.
Now we have invented a new one, which has never been heard of
before,--Paternal Anarchy."
In September 1815 the elections to the Chamber were bringing in deputies
more Royalist than the King, and Talleyrand sought to gain popularity
by throwing over Fouché. To his horror it appeared that, well contented
with this step, the deputies next asked when the former Bishop was to be
dismissed. Taking advantage of what Talleyrand conceived to be a happy
way of eliciting a strong expression of royal support by threatening to
resign, the King replaced him by the Duc de Richelieu. It was well to
cut jokes at the Duke and say that he was the man in France who knew
most of the Crimea (the Duke had been long in the Russian service, with
the approval of Napoleon), but Talleyrand was overwhelmed. He received
the same office at Court which he had held under Napoleon, Grand
Chamberlain, and afterwards remained a sardonic spectator of events,
a not unimposing figure attending at the Court ceremonials and at the
heavy dinners of the King, and probably lending a helping hand in 1830
to oust Charles X. from the throne. The Monarchy of July sent him as
Ambassador to England, where he mixed in local politics, for example,
plotting against Lord Palmerston, whose brusque manners he disliked; and
in 1838 he ended his strange life with some dignity, having, as one of
his eulogists puts it, been faithful to every Government he had served
as long as it was possible to save them.
With the darker side of Talleyrand's character we have nothing to do
here; it is sufficient for our purposes to say that the part the leading
statesman of France took during the Cent Jours was simply nil. In 1814,
he had let the reins slip through his hands; 1815 he could only follow
the King, who even refused to adopt his advice as to the proper way
in which to return to France, and though he once more became Chief
Minister, Talleyrand, like Louis XVIII., owed his restoration in 1815
solely to the Allies.
The Comte d'Artois, the brother of the King, and later King himself as
Charles X., was sent to Lyons, to which place the Duc d'Orleans followed
him, and where the two Princes met Marshal Macdonald. The Marshal did
all that man could do to keep the soldiers true to the Bourbons, but he
had to advise the Princes to return to Paris, and he himself had to
fly for his life when he attempted to stop Napoleon in person. The
Duc d'Orleans was then sent to the north to hold Lille, where the King
intended to take refuge, and the Comte d'Artois remained with the Court.
The Court was very badly off for money, the King, and Clarke, Duke of
Feltre, the War Minister, were the only happy possessors of carriages.
They passed their time, as the Abbe Louis once bitterly remarked, in
saying foolish things till they had a chance of doing them.
The Comte d'Artois, who, probably wisely, certainly cautiously, had
refused to go with De Vitrolles to stir up the south until he had placed
the King in safety, had ended by going to Ghent too, while the Duc de
Berry was at Alost, close by, with a tiny army composed of the remains
of the Maison du Roi, of which the most was made in reports. The Duc
d'Orleans, always an object of suspicion to the King, had left France
with the Royal party, but had refused to stay in Belgium, as he alleged
that it was an enemy's country. He crossed to England where he remained,
greatly adding to the anxiety of Louis by refusing to join him.
The end of these Princes is well known. Louis died in 1824, leaving his
throne to his brother; but Charles only held it till 1830, when after
the rising called "the three glorious days of July," he was civilly
escorted from France, and took shelter in England. The Duc Angouleme
died without issue. The Duc de Berry was assassinated in 1820, but his
widow gave birth to a posthumous son the Duc de Bordeaux, or, to fervid
Royalists, Henri V., though better known to us as the Comte de Chambord,
who died in 1883 without issue, thus ending the then eldest line of
Bourbons, and transmitting his claims to the Orleans family. On the fall
of Charles X. the Duc d'Orleans became King of the French, but he was
unseated by the Revolution of 1848, and died a refugee in England. As
the three Princes of the House of Condé, the Prince de Condé, his son,
the Duc de Bourbon, and his: grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, all died
without further male issue, that noble line is extinct.
When the news of the escape of Napoleon from Elba reached Vienna on
the 7th of March 1815, the three heads of the Allies, the Emperors of
Austria and Russia, and the King of Prussia, were still there. Though
it was said that the Congress danced but did not advance, still a great
deal of work had really been done, and the news of Napoleon's landing
created a fresh bond of union between the Allies which stopped all
further chances of disunion, and enabled them to practically complete
their work by the 9th of June 1815, though the treaties required
cobbling for some years afterwards.
France, Austria, and England had snatched the greater part of Saxony
from the jaws of Prussia, and Alexander had been forced to leave the
King of Saxony to reign over half of his former subjects, without, as
he wished, sparing him the pain of such a degradation by taking all
from him. Russia had to be contented with a large increase of her Polish
dominions, getting most of the Grand-Duchy of Westphalia. Austria had,
probably unwisely, withdrawn from her former outlying provinces in
Swabia and the Netherlands, which had before the Revolution made her
necessarily the guardian of Europe against France, preferring to take
her gains in Italy, gains which she has gradually lost in our days;
while Prussia, by accepting the Rhine provinces, completely stepped into
the former post of Austria. Indeed, from the way in which Prussia was,
after 1815, as it were, scattered across Germany, it was evident that