M. de Talleyrand then, in following the policy suggested by M. Thiers, would, in the first place, have lost the opportunity which he more wisely seized of separating the great powers; he would also have ungenerously abandoned Saxony, and at the same time so disgusted England, that it would afterwards have been impossible to get an English parliament to vote a sixpence for sustaining the Bourbon cause. Waterloo would never have been fought; Russia and Prussia could have done little without English subsidies; and France would have been again delivered into the hands of Napoleon, whose triumph would have been M. de Talleyrand’s own ruin; and the ruin of the master he then served.
As it is not my intention to enter into the general subject of the treaty of Vienna, which I have always considered alike defective in principle and policy, I shall not follow the negotiations I have been alluding to further; though it may be as well, since I have spoken of Naples, to observe that M. de Talleyrand never obtained Prince Metternich’s attention to the dethronement of Murat until the Prussian and Russian questions had been settled by suitable arrangements; for Prince Metternich was too wise to have Germany and Italy on his back at once; when, however, these arrangements were completed, and the brother-in-law of Napoleon had compromised himself by intrigues, which had been watched but allowed to ripen, the Austrian statesman then gave the French ambassador a private but positive assurance that the Kingdom of Naples should shortly be restored to its old possessors.
As to the question of a change of residence for Napoleon, that was decided, just as the congress was closing, by Napoleon himself; who, not ignorant of the plans that were maturing for his removal from a position wherein nothing but the most absurd want of consideration could ever have placed him, engaged in that audacious enterprise, the most glorious, though the most fatal, in his meteor-like career.
IX.
It was in the midst of the gaieties of a ball on the 5th of March,[69] and just as the congress was about to separate, that from a small group of sovereigns collected together and betraying the seriousness of their conversation by the gloom of their countenances, there came forth as a sort of general murmur:—
“Bonaparte has escaped from Elba.” Prince Metternich, it is said, was the only person who at once divined that the ex-Emperor’s intentions were to march at once on Paris. The success of so bold an adventure was, of course, doubtful; but in the hope there might still be time to influence public opinion, a proclamation, proposed (at the instigation of the Duke of Wellington) by Austria, and signed 13th March by France and the four great powers, denounced the Emperor of Elba in language only applicable to a pirate or a freebooter: a language that Louis XVIII. had used at Paris on the 6th of March, and might use with some propriety, but which came far less decorously from princes who had not very long previously treated this pirate and freebooter as “the king of kings,” and which was unsuitable to the lips of a sovereign who was speaking of the husband of his favourite daughter.
People, however, often cover a hesitation in their decisions by an extravagance in their attitude.
The idea of a new war was popular with no one; the different powers, moreover, represented at Vienna, were no longer on the same cordial terms of fraternity that had distinguished their relations at Paris; they felt notwithstanding, that, in the face of a common danger they must consider as extinguished their several rivalries and animosities, and show themselves united and determined on the deadly combat, which alone could, if successful, repair the effects of their imprudence and save the honour of their arms.
Shortly after this came the news of that glorious and soul-stirring march through legions who, when commanded to point their bayonets at the breast of their old commander as a traitor, wept at his knees as a father; but this great historical romance rather strengthened than weakened the resolves that had previously been formed; and the proclamation of the 13th of March was soon succeeded by the treaty of the 25th.
This treaty, to which the four allied powers were the only principal parties, was a revival of the treaty of Chaumont and the treaty of Paris. The position of the Bourbons was not clearly defined; for though Louis XVIII. was invited to be a party to it, the allies, and England in particular, expressly declared that they did not attempt to impose a government on France, nor bind themselves to support the claims of the fugitive monarch. I say “fugitive monarch” because Louis XVIII. had by this time tested the value of his adherents, and was settling down quietly at Ghent; Napoleon being as quietly re-established in the Tuileries.