[CONCLUSION]
But what did more than anything else to forward the dissolution of the school of authority was the great and crowning piece of folly, as regards literature, committed by the Bourbons in 1824. Chateaubriand was dismissed in the most contemptuous manner from the Villèle ministry, and that at the moment when he had just added to the reputation of the name of Bourbon by the successful Spanish war, which he himself called his political René, that is to say, his political masterpiece. Chateaubriand, the man to whom in a manner everything was due, the man who had laid the foundation stone of the whole building that had been erected, was contemptuously set aside.[1] And the ingratitude of his colleagues was as glaring as that of the court, for it was he who had made ministers of Villèle and Corbière.[2]
His popularity amongst the royalists was at this time at its height, and with reason; for the war in Spain, which he had succeeded in carrying through in spite of all manner of opposition in Europe and the disinclination of France itself, was well calculated to do service to the cause of the monarchy by the grace of God, then in considerable disrepute.
Not that Chateaubriand himself was simple enough to have any respect whatever for that Ferdinand of Spain for whom French troops were to shed their blood, in order that he might be restored to a throne which his own people considered him unfit to occupy. He calls him a promise-breaker and a traitor, calls him a tyrant who allowed himself to be influenced by the evil passions of his female relations, one of those cowardly tyrants who have no peace until they have done some high-handed deed, and who sit and tremble when they have done it.
Chateaubriand's reason for making war was this. He knew that France was undermined by Bonapartist and Republican plots, which were widely spread even in the army; he knew that discontent with the restored monarchical government was universal; therefore, trusting to the friendship of the Emperor Alexander, he determined, in spite of Canning's protests and Metternich's dissuasions, to stake everything on one card. Victory, which he considered probable, meant the suppression of the plots, the union under the white flag of all the different parties, and the firm establishment of the Bourbons on the family thrones of Spain and France. In the case of victory, which the inward disunion of Spain might even make easy (as it actually did), the French nation would behold the spectacle of the tricoloured flag lowered to the white, and would, for the first time since Napoleon's palmy days, hear tidings of victories won by the arms of France, and that in a country which the great Emperor himself had not been able thoroughly to subdue. All this meant "new laurels for the race of St. Louis," as Chateaubriand says, and—new laurels for its minister of foreign affairs, a fact which he did not forget to take into account.[3]
As we all know, the French army under the command of the Duke of Angoulème, the heir-apparent, succeeded, almost without bloodshed, in liberating Ferdinand at Cadiz, and conducting him back to Madrid. Ferdinand immediately wrote a letter of thanks to Louis XVIII. The answer to this was written for Louis by Chateaubriand; it is amusing to compare it with Paul Louis Courier's imaginary letter from Louis to Ferdinand. Chateaubriand exhorts the Spanish monarch to refrain from high-handedness, "which, instead of strengthening the power of the king, only weakens it"—a piece of good advice to which Ferdinand paid uncommonly little attention.
In its giddy elation over this Spanish triumph the court entirely neglected the man to whom the success was originally due. Chateaubriand was no favourite. The Duchess of Angoulème did not address a word to him when he came, on receiving the news of Ferdinand's liberation, to offer his congratulations on her husband's success. Villèle and Corbière were envious of him, and feared that he might wish to take their places; such an idea had never occurred to him, but they were too deeply in his debt not to bear him a grudge.
The court and the cabinet plotted to bring about his downfall. On the 5th of June 1824 Corbière interrupted him in the middle of a speech in the Chamber, to prevent his enjoying a triumph as an orator immediately before his disgrace. On the following morning, when Chateaubriand, still suspecting no evil, presented himself at the Tuileries to pay his respects to the King's brother, he learned his fate from the manner in which an aide-de-camp said to him: "Monsieur le Comte, I did not expect to see you here. Have you not received anything?" Shortly afterwards his secretary brought him his formal dismissal by the King in the shape of a curt "ordonnance" of a dozen lines. It was little wonder that he felt himself irreparably insulted by the tone of the letter and the manner of his dismissal.[4] In mentioning Villèle's attempt to excuse himself by pleading an accidental delay in the delivery of the letter, but for which the humiliating incident at the Tuileries would not have occurred, Chateaubriand justifiably remarks "that it is hardly the thing to address to a man of position a letter which one would be ashamed to write to a footman who was to be turned out of the house."
Christian humility was not the leading feature in Chateaubriand's character; he did not turn the right cheek when he was struck on the left. He writes very characteristically: "And yet my long and faithful attachment did perhaps deserve some little consideration. It was impossible for me entirely to ignore what I perhaps after all really was worth, or entirely to forget that I was the restorer of religion, the author of The Spirit of Christianity."
The restorer of religion did not feel obliged to act in the spirit of Christianity. He naïvely says: "It would have been better if I had displayed a humbler, more cast-down, more Christian spirit. Unfortunately I am not faultless, have not attained to the perfection recommended in the Gospel. If my enemy gave me a box on the ear I should not turn round and present the other cheek. If he were a subject I should have his life, or he should take mine; if he were the King ..."