At the restoration of the Bourbons the police organisation was revised, but still left in much the same hands—ex-Napoleonists, such as Beugnot and Bourrienne, who were director-general and prefect respectively. The latter distinguished himself by a fruitless attempt to arrest his old enemy Fouché, who was living quietly in Paris, holding aloof from affairs as he had done through the closing days of the Empire. Fouché escaped from the police officers by climbing over his garden wall, and then went into hiding. He was thus thrown back into the ranks of the Imperialists, and, on the return from Elba, was at once nominated to his old office of chief of police, where he made himself extremely useful to Napoleon. But he played a double part, as usual; had friends in both camps, and, after giving the emperor much valuable information as to the movements of the Allies before Waterloo, went over to the victors after the battle. Fouché was extraordinarily busy in shaping events at the final downfall of Napoleon, and he was one of the first to approach Wellington with suggestions as to the emperor’s disposal. He seems to have gained the Duke’s goodwill, and Wellington urged Louis XVIII. to appoint him afresh, as the person who could be best trusted to maintain public order, to the directorship of the police. Fouché had many friends in high places; he had also the knack of seeming to be indispensable. It was a severe blow to the king that Fouché should be forced upon him. When the order of appointment was placed before him for signature, he glanced at it, and let it lie upon the table, and the pen slipped from his hand; he long sat buried in sad thought before he could rouse himself to open relations with the man who had been hitherto the implacable foe of his family.
Fouché gained his point; but where all knew, all watched, and none trusted him, he needed all his sang froid, all his tact, to hold his position. But in his long career of conspiracy and change he had learnt the lesson of dissimulation and self-restraint. Yet he was still the focus and centre of intrigue, to whom everyone flocked—his old associates, once his friends and now his hardly concealed enemies; the men who had been his enemies and were now on the surface his friends. His antechamber showed the most mixed assemblage. “He went among them, from one to the other, speaking with the same ease as though he had the same thing to say to all. How often have I seen him creeping away from the window where he had been talking apart with some old comrade—Thibaudeau, for example, the ancient revolutionist—on the most friendly, confidential terms, to join us, a party of royalists, about an affair concerning the king. A little later Fouché inserted Thibaudeau’s name in the list of the proscribed.”[11]
Fouché has been very differently judged by his contemporaries. Some thought him an acute and penetrating observer, with a profound insight into character; knowing his epoch, the men and matters appertaining to it, intimately and by heart. Others, like Bourrienne, despised and condemned him. “I know no man,” says the latter, “who has passed through such an eventful period, who has taken part in so many convulsions, who so barely escaped disgrace and was yet loaded with honours.” The keynote of his character, thought Bourrienne, was great levity and inconstancy of mind. Yet he carried out his schemes, planned with mathematical exactitude, with the utmost precision. He had an insinuating manner; could seem to speak freely when he was only drawing others on. A retentive memory and a great grasp of facts enabled him to hold his own with many masters, and turn most things to his own advantage. He did not long survive the Restoration, and died at Trieste in 1820, leaving behind him a very considerable fortune.
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY POLICE (continued): ENGLAND.
Early Police in England—Edward I.’s Act—Elizabeth’s Act for Westminster—Acts of George II. and George III.—State of London towards the end of the Eighteenth Century—Gambling and Lottery Offices—Robberies on the River Thames—Receivers—Coiners—The Fieldings as Magistrates—The Horse Patrol—Bow Street and its Runners: Townsend, Vickery, and others—Blood Money—Tyburn Tickets—Negotiations with Thieves to recover stolen Property—Sayer—George Ruthven—Serjeant Ballantine on the Bow Street Runners compared with modern Detectives.
IF a century or more ago France and other Continental countries were generally over-policed, England, as a free country, long refused to surrender its liberties. Until quite recent years there was no organised provision for public safety, for the maintenance of good order, the prevention of crime, or the pursuit of law-breakers. Good citizens co-operated in self-defence; the office of constable was incumbent upon all, but evaded by many on payment of substitutes. One of the earliest efforts to establish a systematic police was the statute 13th Edward I. (1285), made for the maintenance of peace in the city of London. This ancient statute was known as that of Watch and Ward, and it recognised the above principle that the inhabitants of every district must combine for their own protection. It recites how “many evils, as murders, robberies, and manslaughters,
