Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II

by baron Pierre Alexandre Édouard Fleury de Chaboulon

After this declaration, to which the republican opinions of M. Carnot gave great weight, he entered into an examination of the several branches of the public administration in succession.

He disclosed the state, to which the calamities of the times, and the mismanagement of the regal government, had reduced the finances of the communes, the hospitals, religious worship, public works, mines, manufactures, commerce, and public instruction; and made known the system of improvement, which the Emperor had formed, and already commenced, to restore to the communes and hospitals their former resources, to public works their activity, to commerce its scope, to the university its lustre, to manufactures their prosperity, to the clergy that respect and easiness of circumstances, which it had forfeited through the persecutions, directed by it, at the instigation of the emigrants, against the pretended spoilers of their property.

When come to the war department, he announced, that the Emperor had re-established on its old foundations the army, the elements of which had been intentionally dispersed by the late government. That since the 20th of March our forces had been raised by voluntary enlistments, and the recall of the ancient soldiery, from a hundred thousand men, to three hundred and seventy-five thousand. That the imperial guard, the noblest ornament of France during peace, and its strongest rampart during war, would soon amount to forty thousand men. That the artillery, notwithstanding the twelve thousand six hundred pieces of ordnance delivered to the enemy by the fatal convention of the 23d of April, 1814, had risen from its ruins, and now reckoned a hundred batteries, and twenty thousand horses. That our disorganised arsenals had resumed their labours, and were replacing the army stores. That our manufactories of arms, lately abandoned and empty, had made or repaired four hundred thousand muskets in the course of two months. That a hundred and seventy fortified towns, or fortresses, both on the frontiers and in the interior, had been provisioned, repaired, and put into a condition, to resist an enemy. That the national guard, completely re-organised, had already supplied for the defence of the frontiers two hundred and forty battalions, or a hundred and fifty thousand men; and that the successive formation of the other battalions of flank companies would produce more than two hundred thousand men. That the volunteers in the walled towns, and the pupils of the Lyceums and special schools[36], had been formed into companies of artillery, and constituted a body of more than twenty-five thousand excellent gunners. So that eight hundred and fifty thousand Frenchmen would defend the independence, the liberty, and the honour of the country; while the sedentary national guards were preparing themselves in the interior, to furnish fresh resources for the triumph of the national cause.

In fine, after having taken a hasty view of the hostile dispositions of our enemies, of the interior disturbances they had excited, and of the means the Emperor had adopted to suppress them, M. Carnot concluded his report by expressing a wish, that the two chambers might soon bestow on France, in concert with the Emperor, those organising laws, which were necessary to prevent licentiousness from assuming the place of liberty, and anarchy that of order.

This report, in which M. Carnot did not totally conceal the apprehensions, with which the progress of that spirit of insubordination and demagogism, manifested by certain members of the chamber, inspired the Emperor and the nation, was immediately followed by one from the Duke of Vicenza, on the menacing dispositions of foreign powers, and the fruitless efforts, that the Emperor had made, to bring them to moderate and pacific sentiments. Their hostile resolutions he ascribed chiefly to the suggestions of the cabinet of London. He afterward made known the military preparations of the four great powers, the leagues renewed or recently formed against us, and concluded thus:

"To believe it possible, to maintain peace, at present, therefore, would be a dangerous blindness: war surrounds us on all sides, and it is on the field of battle alone, that peace can be regained by France. The English, the Prussians, the Austrians, are in line of battle; the Russians are in full march. It becomes a duty, to hasten the day of engagement, when too long hesitation might endanger the welfare of the state."

These two reports were presented to the chamber of deputies by ministers of state, at the same time when the ministers were making them known to the chamber of peers. Instead of impressing upon the representatives the necessity of frankly joining the Emperor, and, as one of them observed, of not entering into a contest with the government, at a moment when the blood of Frenchmen was about to be shed, they suggested to them only steril discussions of the impropriety of the connexion of ministers of state with the chamber, and of the urgency of appointing a committee, to remould the additional act. An immoderate desire of speechifying, and of making laws, had seized the greater number of the deputies: but a state is not to be saved by empty words, and schemes of a constitution. The Romans, when their country was in danger, instead of deliberating, suspended the sway of the laws, and gave themselves a dictator.

The next day, the 17th, a new report, made to the Emperor by the minister of police, on the moral state of France, was communicated to the two chambers.

"Sire," said this minister, "it is my duty, to tell you the whole truth. Our enemies are emboldened by instruments without, and supporters within. They wait only for a favourable moment, to realize the plan they conceived twenty years ago, and which during these twenty years has been continually frustrated, of uniting the camp of Jalès to Vendée, and seducing a part of the multitude into that confederacy which extends from the Mediterranean to the Channel.

"In this system, the plains on the left bank of the Loire, the population of which it is most easy to mislead, are the principal focus of the insurrection; which, by the help of the wandering bands of Britanny, is to spread into Normandy, where the vicinity of the islands, and the disposition of the coasts, will render communication more easy. On the other side it rests on the Cevennes, to extend thence to the banks of the Rhone by the revolts, that may be excited in some parts of Languedoc and Provence. Bordeaux has been the centre of the direction of these movements from the beginning.