"Our friends were much excited, and the foreigners greatly displeased. The latter demanded in whom they could have confidence with regard to the French question, and with whom they should treat in such a crisis? M. de Talleyrand had returned from Vienna with a great reputation for ability and success; in the eyes of Europe he represented France and the King. The Austrian Minister had just said to him at Brussels, 'I am ordered to consult you on every occasion, and to be guided entirely by your advice.' He himself haughtily maintained his discontent, and sharply repulsed those who would have persuaded him to rejoin the King. After six hours of rather stormy conversation, it was agreed that Pozzo di Borgo should repair to Cateau, and persuade the Duke of Wellington to take some step which should put an end to this strange misunderstanding; and that MM. de Jaucourt, Louis, and Beugnot should at the same time say to the King, that the men in whom he appeared to confide entertained ideas and projects so diametrically opposed to theirs, that it was impossible they could serve him usefully, and therefore requested permission to retire. It is probable that reflections and measures in conformity with these resolutions had already taken place at Cateau; for on the morning of the 25th, at the same time that we received news of the occurrences at Paris, the abdication of Napoleon, and the embassy of the Commissioners to the Allied Sovereigns, a letter arrived at Mons, from the Duke of Wellington to M. de Talleyrand, couched, as I have been assured, in these exact terms:—
"'I regret much that you have not accompanied the King to this place; it is I who have earnestly requested him to enter France at the same time with ourselves. If I could have told you the motives which sway me in this matter, I have no doubt that you would have given the King the same advice. I trust that you will come to hear them.' M. de Talleyrand decided upon setting out instantly; and we determined to accompany him. We rejoined the King here on the 26th. It was high time; for already a proclamation, dated from Cateau, drawn up, it is said, by M. Dambray, gave a false colouring to the re-entrance of his Majesty. We have hastened to substitute another, of which M. Beugnot is the principal author, and which prognosticates a wholesome policy. The King signed it without hesitation. It appeared yesterday, to the great satisfaction of the public of Cambray. I hope it may produce a similar effect in all other quarters."
We indeed hoped and believed that the end of the great crisis which had overthrown France, as well as the smaller one which had agitated the immediate circle of royalty, was at hand. On all sides affairs appeared to tend towards the same issue. The King was in France; a moderate and national line of policy prevailed in his councils, and animated his words. A feeling of loyalty displayed itself everywhere during his progress, not only with his old party, but amongst the masses; every hand was raised towards him, as to a plank of safety in a shipwreck. The people care little for consistency. At this time I saw, in the northern departments, the same popularity surround the exiled King and the vanquished army. Napoleon had abdicated in Paris, and, notwithstanding a few unworthy alternations of dejection and feverish excitement, of resignation and momentary energy, he was evidently incapable of renewing the struggle. The Chamber of Representatives, which, from its first institution, had shown itself unfavourable to the Imperial system, and opposed to revolutionary excesses, appeared to be earnestly occupied in threading a perilous defile, by avoiding all violence and every irrevocable engagement. Popular passion sometimes murmured, but suffered itself to be easily restrained, and even stopped voluntarily, as if unaccustomed to action or dominion. The army, the scattered corps of which had successively re-united round Paris, had given itself up to patriotic fervour, and, together with France, had plunged into an abyss to prove its devotion and avenge its injuries: but amongst its oldest and most illustrious chiefs, some—such as Gouvion St. Cyr, Macdonald, and Oudinot—had refused to join Napoleon, and openly espoused the Royal cause; others—like Ney, Davoust, Soult, and Masséna—protested with stern candour against fatal delusions, considering that their well-tried courage entitled them to utter melancholy truths, to offer sage advice, and to repress, even by the sacrifice of party credit, military excitement or popular disorder; others, in fine, like Drouot, with an influence conferred by true courage and virtue, maintained discipline in the army in the midst of the mortifications of the retreat behind the Loire, and secured its obedience to the authority of a detested civil power. After so many mistakes and misfortunes, and in the midst of all differences of opinion and situation, there existed still a spontaneous desire and a general effort to preserve France from irreparable errors and total ruin.
But tardy wisdom does not avail, and, even when they wish to become prudent, political genius is wanting to those nations who are not accustomed to decide their own affairs or their own destiny. In the deplorable state into which the enterprise of an heroic and chimerical egotism had thrown France, there was evidently only one line of conduct to pursue,—to recognize Louis XVIII., to accept his liberal concessions, and to act in concert with him while treating with the foreign Powers. This was absolutely necessary; for the most limited mind could foresee that the return of the House of Bourbon was an inevitable, and all but an accomplished fact. Such a course became also a duty, to promote peace and to afford the best means of counteracting the evils of invasion; for Louis XVIII. could alone repel them with any show of authority. An auspicious future was thus opened to liberty; for reason whispered, and experience demonstrated, that, after what had passed in France since 1789, despotism could never more be attempted by the princes of the House of Bourbon—an insurmountable necessity compelled them to adopt defined and constitutional government,—if they resorted to extremes, their strength would prove unequal to success. To accept without hesitation or delay the second restoration, and to place the King, of his own accord, between France and the rest of Europe, became the self-evident dictate of patriotism and sound policy.
Not only was this left undone, but every endeavour was used to make it appear that the Restoration was exclusively the work of foreign interference, and to bring upon France, in addition to her military defeat, a political and diplomatic overthrow. It was not independence of the Empire, or good intentions towards the country, that were wanting in the Chamber of the Hundred Days, but intelligence and resolution. It neither lent itself to imperial despotism nor revolutionary violence; it was not the instrument of either of the extreme parties,—it applied itself honestly to preserve France, on the brink of that abyss towards which they had driven her; but it could only pursue a line of negative policy, it tacked timidly about before the harbour, instead of boldly entering,—closing its eyes when it approached the narrow channel, submitting, not from confidence, but from imbecility, to the blindness or infatuation of the old or new enemies by whom the King was surrounded, and appearing sometimes, from weakness itself, to consent to combinations which in reality it tried to elude;—at one moment proclaiming Napoleon II., and at another any monarch whom the sovereign people might please to select.
To this fruitless vacillation of the only existing public authority, one of the most fatally celebrated actors of the worst times of the Revolution, Fouché, owed his importance and ephemeral success.
When honest men fail to understand or execute the designs of Providence, dishonesty undertakes the task. Under the pressure of circumstances, and in the midst of general weakness, corrupt, sagacious, and daring spirits are ever at hand, who perceive at once what may happen, or what may be attempted, and make themselves the instruments of a triumph to which they have no natural claim, but of which they assume the credit, to appropriate the fruits. Such a man was the Duke of Otranto during the Hundred Days,—a revolutionist transformed into a grandee; and desirous of being consecrated in this double character by the ancient royalty of France, he employed, to accomplish his end, all the cleverness and audacity of a reckless intriguer more clear-sighted and sensible than his associates. Perhaps also—for justice ought to retain its scruples even towards those who have none themselves—perhaps a desire to save his country from violence and useless suffering may have had some share in the series of treasons and imperturbable changes of side, by means of which, while deceiving and playing alternately with Napoleon, La Fayette, and Carnot, the Empire, the Republic, and the regicidal Convention, Fouché gained the time that he required to open for himself the doors of the King's cabinet, while he opened the gates of Paris to the King.
Louis XVIII. offered some resistance, but, notwithstanding what he had said to me at Ghent respecting Cambacérès, I doubt whether he objected strongly. He was one of those who are dignified from habit and decorum rather than from a real and powerful emotion of the soul; and propriety disappeared before emergency. He had, as vouchers for the necessities of the case, two authorities who were the best calculated to influence his decision and uphold his honour; the Duke of Wellington and the Count d'Artois both urged him to accept Fouché as a minister:—Wellington, to secure an easy return for the King, and also that he himself, and England with him, might remain the principal author of the Restoration by promptly terminating the war before Paris, where he feared to be compromised through the violent hatred of the Prussians; the Count d'Artois, with impatient levity, always ready to promise and agree, and already entangled through his most active confidant, M. de Vitrolles, in the snare which Fouché had spread for the Royalists on every side.
I do not believe in the necessity which they urged upon the King. Fouché had no control over Paris; the army had retired; the Federates were more noisy than powerful; the Chamber of Representatives consoled themselves, by discussing a constitution, for not having dared or known how to form a government; no party was either able or disposed to arrest effectually the tide which carried the King along. A little less eagerness, and a little more determination, would have spared him a sad dishonour. By waiting a few days he would have incurred the risk, not of fatal resolutions or violence, but merely of the temporary continuance of disorder and alarm. Necessity presses upon people as well as on kings: that with which Fouché armed himself to become minister to Louis XVIII. was factitious and ephemeral; that which brought Louis XVIII. back to the Tuileries was real, and became hourly more urgent. There was no occasion for him to receive the Duke of Otranto into his cabinet at Arnouville; he might have remained there patiently, for they would soon have sought him. I thought thus at the time, after having passed two days in Paris, where I arrived on the 3rd of July, when the manœuvres of Fouché were following their course. All that I subsequently saw and heard tended to confirm me in this opinion.