“He has accompanied me constantly as my aide-de-camp,” said the Prince, “on my mission, at the time of my arrest and during my escape, and he has never failed to give me new proofs daily of his intelligence and zeal, of his boundless devotion to the King, and of his capacity. If ever services rendered could justify me in recommending any one to the favour of the King, this estimable officer would be the first I should venture to recommend.”
These words produced their effect. On February 24, 1816, Cormier was appointed “chef de bataillon” in the first regiment of infantry of the Royal Guard. Three years later he became a lieutenant-colonel, and as such he took part in the Spanish expedition of 1823, under the command of the Duc d’Angoulême. Charged with the carrying out of an order to the Royal Spanish troops before Figuières, he fell into an ambuscade of thirty Constitutional soldiers, and received their volley at a distance of a few yards. By a miracle he escaped with a wound on the hip, and succeeded in fulfilling his mission.
Promoted to the rank of colonel, November 1, 1823, Cormier was stationed at the Garrison at Rochefort at the outbreak of the Revolution of July. Refusing to serve under the new régime, he sent in his resignation to the Minister for War, August 5, 1830. This is the last we hear of him. He died in a suburb of Paris.
His uncle, de Butler, after living for some time in Hamburg, where he doubtless was regarded by the other émigrés with suspicion by reason of his intimate relations with Bourrienne, Minister to the Emperor, returned to England, where he is lost sight of. He died at Gothenburg in Sweden in 1815.
Bereft of his two sons, Comte Henri de Frotté remained in England entirely alone for a time, but returned to France on the restoration of the Bourbons, obtained the rank of maréchal de camp, and died in Paris, February 28, 1823. An enthusiastic Royalist, active and keen, the Comte de Frotté had never ceased to interest himself in the welfare of the émigrés in England, and came to be regarded as their benefactor.
The career of Jean-Gabriel Peltier was of a more singular description. This energetic pamphleteer had been editing in London ever since 1802 a journal entitled L’Ambigu, in which he unceasingly vented his spleen against the “Premier Consul.” His violence went to such lengths that in 1803, on the reiterated demand of the incensed Napoleon, he was brought before an English tribunal. He was defended by the famous counsel, James Mackintosh, and received only a mild sentence, with the result that he left the court in triumph, and attained wide celebrity throughout Europe over the affair. In addition to his newspaper work, Peltier was interested in a number of publishing enterprises, which helped to make a livelihood for him.
Some years later the Fates made him chargé d’affaires to the Emperor of Haïti. The amusement produced by this strange appointment may be imagined. What made the thing still funnier was the fact that His Haïtian Majesty paid his representative not in money but in kind, transmitting to him cargoes of sugar and coffee. Peltier negotiated these from time to time for the benefit of his creditors.
On the return of the Bourbons, Peltier returned to France, hoping, like every one else, for his share of recompense, but only to be disillusioned. He consoled himself with the reflection that if his King treated him like a nigger, at least his nigger (the Emperor of Haïti!) treated him like a king—
“Mon roi me traite comme un nègre
Mais mon nègre a son tour me traite comme un roi.”