I returned to Woburn on Sunday. We shot the whole week and killed an immense quantity of game; the last two days we killed 245 and 296 pheasants, 822 and 431 head. On Sunday last arrived the news of the King’s death.[36] The new King has been desperately ill. He had a bad cold at Brighton, for which he lost eighty ounces of blood; yet he afterwards had a severe oppression, amounting almost to suffocation, on his chest. Halford was gone to Windsor, and left orders with Knighton not to bleed him again till his return. Knighton was afraid to bleed him. REIGN OF GEORGE IV. Bloomfield sent for Tierney,[37] who took upon himself to take fifty ounces from him. This gave him relief; he continued, however, dangerously ill, and on Wednesday he lost twenty ounces more. Yesterday afternoon he was materially better for the first time. Tierney certainly saved his life, for he must have died if he had not been blooded. Brougham sent a courier to the Queen immediately after the late King’s death, and gave notice at Carlton House that he had applied for a passport for a courier to her Majesty the Queen.

[36] [King George III. died on the 20th of January, 1820.]

[37] [Sir Matthew Tierney, one of His Majesty’s physicians.]

The King has given to Lady Bloomfield the Rangership of Hampton Court Park. He wished to give it to both of them with the survivorship, but Lord Liverpool submitted to him that the House of Commons had pronounced so strongly their dislike to reversionary grants that it would be unadvisable, and it was accordingly given to Lady B. only.

February 14th, 1820

The Cabinet sat till past two o’clock this morning. The King refused several times to order the Queen to be prayed for in the alteration which was made in the Liturgy. The Ministers wished him to suffer it to be done, but he peremptorily refused, and said nothing should induce him to consent, whoever might ask him. Lord Harrowby told me this last night.

I think Fleury’s book[38] almost the most interesting memoir I ever read; it is excessively well written, and his partiality to Bonaparte has not blinded him to the errors he committed. This book was wanted to bring under the same view the immediate causes of his return to France and the situation in which he found himself when seated on the throne. This was essentially different from that in which he had been before his abdication; so much so that I do not believe, if he had concluded a peace with the Allies, he could have remained upon the throne. Not only his civil power was NAPOLEON IN THE HUNDRED DAYS. reduced within very narrow limits, but his military authority was no longer the same; men seemed to have lost that reverential submissiveness which caused all his orders to be so blindly and implicitly obeyed. During the height of his power none of his generals would have dared to neglect or oppose his orders as Ney did at the battles of the 16th of June. It is impossible now to determine what might have been the political result in France of the success of Bonaparte’s arms had he gained the battle of Waterloo. He would probably have made peace with the Allies. Had he returned to Paris triumphant, he might have dissolved the Chambers and re-established the old Imperial Government. In such a measure he must have depended upon his army for success. But a spirit of liberty had sprung up in France during his absence, which seemed to be the more vigorous from having been so long repressed. The nation, and even the army, appear to have imbibed the principles of freedom; and if upon this occasion Bonaparte was placed on the throne by the force of opinion, he could not have restored the ancient despotism without exciting universal dissatisfaction. Men seem formerly to have been awed by a conviction of his infallibility, and did not suffer themselves to reason upon the principles of action of a man who dazzled their imaginations by the magnificence of his exploits and the grandeur of his system.

[38] [M. Fleury de Chabaulon was a young auditeur at the Conseil d’État who had joined Napoleon at Elba, and afterwards returned with him to France, when he was attached to the Imperial Cabinet during the Hundred Days. His memoir of that period is here referred to.]

February 20th, 1820

The Ministers had resigned last week because the King would not hear reason on the subject of the Princess. It is said that he treated Lord Liverpool very coarsely, and ordered him out of the room. The King, they say, asked him ‘if he knew to whom he was speaking.’ He replied, ‘Sir, I know that I am speaking to my Sovereign, and I believe I am addressing him as it becomes a loyal subject to do.’ To the Chancellor he said, ‘My Lord, I know your conscience always interferes except where your interest is concerned.’ The King afterwards sent for Lord Liverpool, who refused at first to go; but afterwards, on the message being reiterated, he went, and the King said, ‘We have both been too hasty.’ This is probably all false, but it is very true that they offered to resign.