“Is not Soult as high, or rather, is he not far higher, in the favour of his sovereign, Louis Philippe, than ever he was in that of the Emperor? Is not Moncey a man nobly pensioned as Captain of the Invalides?”
“All true! But where are the hundreds—I had almost said thousands, but that death has been so busy in these tranquil times with those it had spared in more eventful days—where are they, the old soldiers, who served in inferior grades, the men whose promotions for the hard fighting at Montereau and Chalons needed but a few days more of prosperity to have confirmed, but who saw their best hopes decline as the sun of the Emperor’s glory descended?
“What rewards were given even to many of the more distinguished, but whose principles were known to be little in accordance with the new order of things? What of Pajol, who captured a Dutch fleet with his cavalry squadrons;—ay! charged the three-deckers as they lay ice-locked in the Scheldt, dismounted half of his force and boarded them, as in a sea-fight? Poor Pajol! he died the other day, at eighty-three or four, followed to the grave by the comrades he had fought and marched beside, but with no honours to his memory from the King or his government. No, sir, believe me, the present people never liked the Buonapartists; the sad contrasts presented by all their attempts at military renown with those glorious spectacles of the Empire were little flattering to them.”
“Then you evidently think Soult and some others owe their present favour, less to the eminence of their services than to the plasticity of their principles?”
“Who ever thought Soult a great general?” said he, abruptly answering my question by this transition. “A great military organizer, certainly—the best head for the administration of an army, or the Emperor’s staff—but nothing more. His capacity as a tactician was always third rate.”
I could not help acknowledging that such was the opinion of our own great captain, who has avowed that he regarded Massena as the most accomplished and scientific general to whom he was ever opposed.
“And Massena’s daughter,” cried the veteran indignantly, “lives now in the humblest poverty—the wife of a very poor man, who cultivates a little garden near Brussels, where femmes de chambre are sent to buy bouquets for their mistresses! The daughter of a Maréchal de France, a title once that Kings loved to add to their royalty, as men love to ennoble station by evidences of high personal desert!”
“How little fidelity, however, did these men shew to him who had made them thus great! how numerous were the desertions!—how rapid too!”
“Yes, there was an epidemic of treason at that time in France, just as you have seen at different epochs, here, other epidemics prevail: in the Revolution the passion was for the guillotine; then came the lust of military glory—that suited us best, and lasted longest; we indulged in it for twenty years: then succeeded that terrible revulsion, and men hastened to prove how false-hearted they could be. Then came the Restoration—and the passion was to be Catholic; and now we have another order of things, whose worst feature is, that there is no prevailing creed. Men live for the day and the hour. The King’s health—the state of Spain—a bad harvest—an awkward dispute between the commander of our squadron in the Pacific with some of your admirals,—anything may overturn the balance, and our whole political and social condition may have to be built up once more.”
“The great remedy against this uncertainty is out of your power,” said I: “you abolished the claims of Sovereignty on the permanent affection of the people, and now you begin to feel the want of ‘Loyalty.’”