Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott
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this or any other object, the discontent of the army became universal, and they might be pronounced ripe for any desperate enterprise.
Among the soldiers, the late Imperial Guards were distinguished for their sullen enmity to the new order of things, and deemed themselves insulted at the guard of the King's person being committed to a body of household troops, selected as approved loyalists. The army were also much disgusted, that the decorations of the Legion of Honour had been distributed with a profusion, which seemed intended to diminish its value. But the course of promotion was the deepest source of discontent. The princes of the blood-royal had been early declared colonels-general by the King; and the army soon discovered, or supposed they discovered, that under their auspices the superior ranks of the army were likely to be filled by the emigrant nobility, whose military service was considered as having been continued, while they were in attendance upon the King during his exile. The most indecent competition was thus excited between those whose claims were founded on their devoted attachment to the House of Bourbon, and those who had borne arms against that family, but still in the service of France. The truth is, that the derangement of the finances, and the jealousy of the ministers, each of whom claimed the exclusive patronage of his own department, left the King no means so ready for discharging his debts of gratitude, and affording the means of subsistence to his ancient friends and adherents, as by providing for them in the army. The measure, though perhaps unavoidable, was in many respects undesirable. Old men, past the age of service, or young men who had never known it, were, in virtue of these claims, placed in situations, to which the actual warriors conceived they had bought a title by their laurels and their scars. The appearance of the superannuated emigrants, who were thus promoted to situations ill-suited to age and infirmity, raised the ridicule and contempt of Buonaparte's soldiers, while the patrician haughtiness, and youthful presumption, of the younger nobles, excited their indignation. The agents and friends of Buonaparte suffered not these passions to cool. "There is a plot of the royalists against you," was incessantly repeated to the regiments upon which these new officers were imposed. "The Bourbons cannot think themselves safe while those who shared the triumphs of Napoleon have either honour or existence. Your ranks are subjected to the command of dotards, who have never drawn a sword in battle, or who have served only in the emigrant bands of Condé, or among the insurgent Chouans and Vendéans. What security have you against being disbanded on a day's notice? And if the obligations of the government to you bind them, as it would seem, so slightly, will you consider yours to them as of a stricter description?" Such insinuations, and such reasoning, inflamed the prejudices of the army. Disaffection spread generally through their ranks; and, long before the bold attempt of Napoleon, his former soldiery were almost universally prepared to aid him in the recovery of his power.
The state of active political parties in France, we have thus described; but, as is usual, the mass of the population were somewhat indifferent to their principles, unless in moments of excitation. Parties in a state are to the people at large what the winds are to the ocean. That which predominates for the time, rolls the tide in its own direction; the next day it is hushed, and the waves are under a different influence. The people of France at large were averse to the Republicans or Jacobins. They retained too awful an impression of the horrors of the tyranny exercised by these political fanatics, to regard them otherwise than with terror. They were as little Buonapartists; because they dreaded the restless temper of him who gave name to this faction, and saw that while he was at the head of the French government, the state of war must be perpetual. They could not be termed Royalists, for they comprehended many with whom the name of Bourbon had lost its charms; and a very large proportion of the country had their fortune and prosperity so intimately connected with the Revolution, that they were not disposed to afford any countenance to the re-establishment of the monarchy on its ancient footing.
Upon the whole, this class of Frenchmen who may be called moderates, or constitutionalists, and who contained the great bulk of the men of property, substance, and education, hoped well of the King's government. His good sense, humanity, love of justice, moderation, and other valuable qualities, recommended him to their esteem, and they thought his restoration might be considered as the guarantee of a lasting peace with the other nations of Europe. But they dreaded and deprecated that counter revolutionary reaction, as the established phrase was, which was regarded as the object of the princes of the blood, the nobility, and the clergy. The property of many of the constitutionalists was vested in national domains, and they watched with doubt and fear every step which the emigrant nobility and clergy seemed disposed to take for recovery of their former rights.
On this subject the moderate party were sensitively jealous, and the proceedings which took place in the Chamber of Deputies threw striking light on the state of the public mind. We must, therefore, turn the reader's attention in that direction.
A petty riot, concerning precedence, had arisen in a church called Durnac, between the seigneur of the parish, and the mayor of the commune. The mayor brought the affair before the Chamber of Deputies by a violent petition, in which he generalized his complaint against the whole body of emigrants, whom he accused of desiring to place themselves above the constituted authorities, and to treat France as a conquered country. The Chamber, 20th November, 1814, treated the language of the petition as calumnious, and the squabble as unworthy of their notice. But the debate called forth expressions which intimated a suspicion that there existed a dark and secret system, which tended to sow the seeds of discord and anarchy among the citizens, and to resuscitate pretensions incompatible with the laws. "It was," said the member78 who made this statement, "important to impress every class of Frenchmen with the great idea, that there was no safety for France, for the King, for every member of society, but in the maintenance of those constitutional principles on which were founded the laws for protecting the whole."
The claims of the emigrants for restoration of their forfeited property, were, abstractedly, as just and indubitable as that of the King to the throne. But the political considerations in which they were involved, rendered any general attempt to enforce those claims the sure signal of civil war; a civil war almost certain to end in a second expatriation, both of the royal family and their followers. In this dilemma, government seems to have looked anxiously for some means of compromise which might afford relief to the emigrants, without innovating on that article of the charter which ratified the sale of national domains. M. Ferrand brought forward in the Chamber of Delegates, a motion [Dec. 3] for the restoration of such estates of emigrants as yet remained unsold. But this involved a question respecting the rights of the much more numerous class whose property had been seized upon by the state, and disposed of to third parties, to whom it was guaranteed by the charter. Since these gentlemen could not be restored ex jure, to their estates, as was proposed towards their more fortunate brethren, they had at least a title to the price which had been surrogated in place of the property, of which price the nation had still possession.
These proposals called forward M. Durbach, who charged Ferrand with the fatal purpose of opening the door on the vast subject of national domains. "Already," continued the orator, "the two extremities of the kingdom have resounded with the words of the minister, as with the claps which precede the thunderbolt. The effect which they have produced has been so rapid and so general, that all civil transactions have been at once suspended. A general distrust and excessive fear have caused a stagnation, the effects of which even the royal treasury has felt. The proprietors of national property can no longer sell or mortgage their estates. They are suddenly reduced to poverty in the very bosom of wealth. Whence arises this calamity? The cause of it is the declaration of the minister, that the property they possess does not legally belong to them. For this is, in fact, the consequence of his assertion, that 'the law recognises in the emigrants a right to property which always existed.'"
The celebrated Maréchal Macdonald, a friend at once of monarchy and freedom, of France and the Bourbons, undertook to bring forward a plan for satisfying the emigrants, as far as the condition of the nation permitted; and giving, at the same time, some indemnity for the pensions assigned by Buonaparte to his veteran soldiers, which, during his reign, had been paid from countries beyond the verge of France, until after the retreat from Moscow, when they ceased to be paid at all. The maréchal's statement of the extent of the sale of the national domains, shows how formidable the task of undoing that extensive transference of property must necessarily have been;
M. Dumolard. See Moniteur, Nov. 24.