My dear sir,—Je regrette Charles Greville. C'etait l'un des spectateurs politiques les plus clairvoyants, les plus fins et les plus équitables que j'aie rencontrés en ma vie; et un ami fidèle sans se donner tout entier à personne. Vous devez regretter beaucoup son amitié et sa société. Ses mémoires seront bien curieux. Je suis charmé qu'il vous les ait légués. Personne ne saura mieux choisir ce qu'il en faut publier, et le moment opportun pour les publier. Quand vous prendrez une résolution à cet égard, je vous prie de m'en avertir; vous en désirerez, ce me semble, une édition française….
The Journal here gives a remarkable contribution to the history of the French Revolution of 1830, the substance of which Reeve afterwards published in the 'Edinburgh Review,' in an article on 'Circourt' (October 1881).
March 14th.—The Club elected the Duc d'Aumale and Tennyson.
19th.—Mrs. Gollop [Mrs. Reeve's mother] died. I joined Christine at Strode, and attended the funeral at Lillington.
April 5th.—M. de Circourt has been staying with us for three weeks; inexhaustible in memory, anecdote, and conversation. I first knew him at Geneva in 1830, where he took refuge after the storm of the Revolution, and where he soon afterwards married Anastasia de Klustine.
I asked him the other day what he knew of the 'Ordonnances' of July. He was at that time, with Bois-le-Comte and Vieil-Castel, one of the chief employés of Prince Polignac, in the Office of Foreign Affairs; and from his wonderful memory and facility, Polignac used often to send him to Charles X., to relate the substance of the despatches from foreign Courts. But, although he was thus versed in foreign affairs, he knew very little of what was passing in the interior of France, though from the violence of the conflict between the Court and the Chamber he foreboded a catastrophe.
Polignac told him nothing of the Ordinances, nor had he told the Princess, his wife; for Circourt dined with them on the day they were signed—it was Sunday, July 25th, 1830. The minister was distrait. The Princess got C. aside to the piano after dinner, and said to him: 'Il se passe quelque chose;—do you know what it is?' Neither of them knew. C. thinks, however, that Bois-le-Comte was in Polignac's confidence.
In consequence of the absence of Marshal Bourmont on the Algerian expedition, Polignac was minister of war ad interim [as well as minister of foreign affairs]; but he had not made the smallest military preparations, or even inquiries, as to the possibility of putting down a popular tumult. On that Sunday, for the first time, he sent for the officers in command of the troops. A dispute arose between them, which Polignac had to settle. It then turned out that in the whole of the first military division, which included not only Paris, but Orleans and Rouen and all the intermediate places, there were not 12,000 men. In Paris itself about 3,400 at that moment, including the gendarmerie.
The reason of this was a political and military combination which the Government had formed, but which I never before heard mentioned by anyone. Polignac had for some time been intriguing to detach Belgium from the King of Holland's dominions—chiefly from a fanatical desire to release a Catholic population from their Protestant connexion, but in part, also, from a notion that a military demonstration on the side of Belgium would be popular in France, and would disarm the Opposition. So that the movement which took place at Brussels shortly after the Revolution of July, and was attributed to the example of that democratic explosion, had, in fact, been prepared by Polignac himself. This is strange enough; but what is still more strange is that the very means taken to promote this lawless object proved to be the ruin of Charles X. and his minister.
With a view to the occupation of Belgium, or at least of a demonstration on the frontier, they had assembled two large camps at Luneville and St.-Omer; and in these camps the bulk of the available forces of the kingdom were collected, especially as Bourmont had with him a considerable and well-appointed army in Africa. So that at the very moment when troops were most needed in Paris, one portion of the King's army was beyond the seas, and another out of reach on the Belgian frontier.