I IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR, TO RESUME MY LECTURES.—UNSETTLED FEELING OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES ON THE RETURN OF NAPOLEON.—ITS REAL CAUSES.—SENTIMENTS OF FOREIGN NATIONS AND GOVERNMENTS TOWARDS NAPOLEON.—APPARENT RECONCILIATION, BUT REAL STRUGGLE, BETWEEN NAPOLEON AND THE LIBERALS.—THE FEDERATES.—CARNOT AND FOUCHÉ.—DEMONSTRATION OF LIBERTY DURING THE HUNDRED DAYS, EVEN IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE.—LOUIS XVIII. AND HIS COUNCIL AT GHENT.—THE CONGRESS AND M. DE TALLEYRAND AT VIENNA.—I GO TO GHENT ON THE PART OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ROYALIST COMMITTEE AT PARIS.—MY MOTIONS AND OPINIONS DURING THIS JOURNEY.—STATE OF PARTIES AT GHENT.—MY CONVERSATION WITH LOUIS XVIII.—M. DE BLACAS.—M. DE CHÂTEAUBRIAND.—M. DE TALLEYRAND RETURNS FROM VIENNA.—LOUIS XVIII. RE-ENTERS FRANCE.—INTRIGUE PLANNED AT MONS AND DEFEATED AT CAMBRAY.—BLINDNESS AND IMBECILITY OF THE CHAMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES.—MY OPINION RESPECTING THE ADMISSION OF FOUCHÉ INTO THE KING'S CABINET.
The King having quitted, and the Emperor having re-entered Paris, I resumed my literary pursuits, determined to keep aloof from all secret intrigue, all useless agitation, and to occupy myself with my historical labours and studies, not without a lively regret that the political career which had scarcely opened to me, should be so suddenly closed.[9] It is true I did not believe that I was excluded beyond the possibility of return. Not but that the miraculous success of Napoleon had convinced me there was a power within him which, after witnessing his fall, I was far from believing. Never was personal greatness displayed with more astounding splendour; never had an act more audacious, or better calculated in its audacity, arrested the imagination of nations. Neither was external support wanting to the man who relied so much on himself, and on himself alone.
The army identified itself with him, with an enthusiastic and blind devotion. Amongst the popular masses, a revolutionary and warlike spirit, hatred of the old system and national pride, rose up at his appearance and rushed madly to his aid. Accompanied by fervent worshippers, he re-ascended a throne abandoned to him on his approach. But by the side of this overwhelming power, there appeared almost simultaneously a proportionate weakness. He who had traversed France in triumph, and who by personal influence had swept all with him, friends and enemies, re-entered Paris at night, exactly as Louis XVIII. had quitted that capital, his carriage surrounded by dragoons, and only encountering on his passage a scanty and moody populace. Enthusiasm had accompanied him throughout his journey; but at its termination he found coldness, doubt, widely disseminated mistrust, and cautious reserve; France divided, and Europe irrevocably hostile.
The upper, and particularly the middle classes, have often been reproached with their indifference and selfishness. It has been said that they think only of their personal interests, and are incapable of public principle and patriotism. I am amongst those who believe that nations, and the different classes that constitute nations—and, above all, nations that desire to be free—can only live in security and credit under a condition of moral perseverance and energy; with feelings of devotion to their cause, and with the power of opposing courage and self-sacrifice to danger. But devotion does not exclude sound sense, nor courage intelligence. It would be too convenient for ambitious pretenders, to have blind and fearless attachment ever ready at their command. It is often the case with popular feeling, that the multitude, army or people, ignorant, unreflecting, and short-sighted, become too frequently, from generous impulse, the instruments and dupes of individual selfishness, much more perverse and more indifferent to their fate than that of which the wealthy and enlightened orders are so readily accused. Napoleon, perhaps more than any other eminent leader of his class, has exacted from military and civil devotion the most trying proofs; and when, on the 21st of June, 1815, his brother Lucien, in the Chamber of Representatives, reproached France with not having upheld him with sufficient ardour and constancy, M. de la Fayette exclaimed, with justice: "By what right is the nation accused of want of devotion and energy towards the Emperor Napoleon? It has followed him to the burning sands of Egypt, and the icy deserts of Moscow; in fifty battle-fields, in disaster as well as in triumph, in the course of ten years, three millions of Frenchmen have perished in his service. We have done enough for him!"
Great and small, nobility, citizens, and peasants, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, generals and private soldiers, the French people in a mass had, at least, done and suffered enough in Napoleon's cause to give them the right of refusing to follow him blindly, without first examining whether he was leading them, to safety or to ruin.
The unsettled feeling of the middle classes in 1815 was a legitimate and patriotic disquietude. What they wanted, and what they had a right to demand, for the advantage of the entire nation as well as for their own peculiar interests, was that peace and liberty should be secured to them; but they had good reason to question the power of Napoleon to accomplish these objects.
Their doubts materially increased when they ascertained the Manifesto of the Allied Powers assembled at the Congress of Vienna, their declaration of March 13th, and their treaty of the 25th. Every reflecting mind of the present day must see, that unless the nation had obstinately closed its eyes, it could not delude itself as to the actual situation of the Emperor Napoleon, and his prospects for the future. Not only did the Allied Powers, in proclaiming him the enemy and disturber of the peace of the whole world, declare war against him to the last extremity, and engage themselves to unite their strength in this common cause, but they professed themselves ready to afford to the King of France and the French nation the assistance necessary to re-establish public tranquillity; and they expressly invited Louis XVIII. to give his adhesion to their treaty of March 25th. They laid it down also as a principle, that the work of general pacification and reconstruction accomplished in Paris by the treaty of the 30th of May, 1814, between the King of France and confederated Europe, was in no degree nullified by the violent outbreak which had recently burst forth; and that they should maintain it against Napoleon, whose return and sudden success—the fruit of military and revolutionary excitement—could establish no European right whatever, and could never be considered by them as the prevailing and true desire of France:—a solemn instance of the implacable judgments that, assisted by God and time, great errors draw down upon their authors!
The partisans of Napoleon might dispute the opinion of the Allied Powers as to the wishes of France; they might believe that, for the honour of her independence, she owed him her support; but they could not pretend that foreign nations should not also have their independence at heart, nor persuade them that, with Napoleon master of France, they could ever be secure. No promises, no treaties, no embarrassments, no reverses, could give them confidence in his future moderation. His character and his history deprived his word of all credit.
It was not alone governments, kings, and ministers who showed themselves thus firmly determined to oppose Napoleon's return; foreign nations were even more distrustful and more violent against him. He had not alone overwhelmed them with wars, taxes, invasions, and dismemberments; he had insulted as much as he had oppressed them. The Germans, especially, bore him undying hatred. They burned to revenge the injuries of the Queen of Prussia, and the contempt with which their entire race had been treated. The bitter taunts in which he had often indulged when speaking of them were repeated in every quarter, spread abroad and commented on, probably with exaggeration readily credited. After the campaign in Russia, the Emperor was conversing, one day, on the loss sustained by the French army during that terrible struggle. The Duke of Vicenza estimated it at 200,000 men. "No, no," interrupted Napoleon, "you are mistaken; it was not so much." But, after considering a moment, he continued, "And yet you can scarcely be wrong; but there were a great many Germans amongst them." The Duke of Vicenza himself related this contemptuous remark to me; and the Emperor Napoleon must have been pleased both with the calculation and reply, for on the 28th of June, 1813, at Dresden, in a conversation which has since become celebrated, he held the same language to the Prime Minister of the first of the German Powers, to M. de Metternich himself. Who can estimate the extent of indignation roused by such words and actions, in the souls not only of the heads of the government and army—- amongst the Steins, Gneisenaus, Blüchers, and Müfflings—but in those of the entire nation? The universal feeling of the people of Germany was as fully displayed at the Congress of Vienna as the foresight of their diplomatists and the will of their sovereigns.
Napoleon, in quitting Elba, deceived himself as to the disposition of Europe towards him. Did he entertain the hope of treating with and dividing the Coalition? This has been often asserted, and it may be true; for the strongest minds seldom recognize all the difficulties of their situation. But, once arrived at Paris, and informed of the proceedings of the Congress, he beheld his position in its true light, and his clear and comprehensive judgment at once grappled with it in all its bearings. His conversations with the thinking men who were then about him, M. Molé and the Duke of Vicenza, confirm this opinion. He sought still to keep the public in the uncertainty that he himself no longer felt. The Manifesto of the Congress of the 13th of March was not published in the 'Moniteur' until the 5th of April, and the treaty of the 25th of March only on the 3rd of May. Napoleon added long commentaries to these documents, to prove that it was impossible they could express the final intentions of Europe. At Vienna, both by solemnly official letters and secret emissaries, he made several attempts to renew former relations with the Emperor Francis, his father-in-law, to obtain the return of his wife and son, to promote disunion, or at least mistrust, between the Emperor Alexander and the sovereigns of England and Austria, and to bring back to his side Prince Metternich, and even M. de Talleyrand himself. He probably did not expect much from these advances, and felt little surprise at not finding, in family ties and feelings, a support against political interests and pledges. He understood and accepted without a sentiment of anger against any one, and perhaps without self-reproach, the situation to which the events of his past life had reduced him. It was that of a desperate gamester, who, though completely ruined, still plays on, alone, against a host of combined adversaries, a desperate game, with no other chance of success than one of those unforeseen strokes that the most consummate talent could never achieve, but that Fortune sometimes bestows upon her favourites.