The particular subject which occupied the attention of the Congress was, whether the great Powers should intervene in the internal affairs of Spain, then agitated by revolution. King Ferdinand, who was restored to his throne after the forced abdication of Joseph Bonaparte, had broken the Constitution of 1812, which he had sworn to defend, and outraged his subjects by cruelties equalled only by those of that other Bourbon who reigned at Naples. In consequence, his subjects had rebelled, and sought to secure their liberties. This rebellion disturbed all Europe, and the great Powers, with the exception of England,--ruled virtually by Canning, the foreign minister,--resolved on an armed intervention to suppress the popular revolution. Chateaubriand used all his influence in favor of intervention; and so did Montmorency. They even exceeded the instructions of the king and Villèle the prime minister, who wished to avoid a war with Spain; they acted as the representatives of the Holy Alliance rather than as ambassadors of France. The Congress committed Russia, Austria, and Prussia to hostile interference, in case the king of France should be driven into war,--a course which Wellington disapproved, and which he urged Louis XVIII. to refrain from. In consequence, the French king temporized, dreading either to resist or to submit to the ascendency of Russia, and dissatisfied with the course his negotiators had taken at the Congress, especially his minister of foreign affairs, on whom the responsibility lay. Montmorency accordingly resigned, and Chateaubriand took his place; in consequence of which a coolness sprung up between the two friends, who at the Congress had equally advocated the same policy.
The discussions which ensued in the chambers whether or not France should embark in a war with Spain,--in other words, whether she should interfere with the domestic affairs of a foreign and independent nation,--were the occasion of the first serious split among the statesmen of France at this time. There was a party for war and a party against it; at the head of the latter were men who afterward became distinguished. There were bitter denunciations of the ministers; but the war party headed by Chateaubriand prevailed, and the French ambassador was recalled from Madrid, although war was not yet formally declared. In the Chamber of Peers Talleyrand used his influence against the invasion of Spain, foretelling the evils which would ultimately result, even as he had cautioned Napoleon against the same thing. He told the chamber that although the proposed invasion would be probably successful, it would be a great mistake.
M. Molé, afterward so eminent as an orator, took the side of Talleyrand. "Where are we going?" said he. "We are going to Madrid. Alas, we have been there already! Will a revolution cease when the independence of the people who are suffering from it is threatened? Have we not the example of the French Revolution, which was invincible when its cause became identical with that of our independence?" "This man," exclaimed the king, "confirms me in the system of M. de Villèle,--to temporize, and avoid the war if it be possible."
Chateaubriand replied in an elaborate speech in favor of the war. From his standpoint, his speech was masterly and unanswerable. It was a grand consecutive argument, solid logic without sentimentalism. While he admitted that, according to the principles laid down by the great writers on international war, intervention could not generally be defended, he yet maintained that there were exceptions to the rule, and this was one of them; that the national safety was jeopardized by the Spanish revolution; that England herself had intervened in the French Revolution; that all the interests of France were compromised by the successes of the Spanish revolutionists; that a moral contagion was spreading even among the troops themselves; in fact, that there was no security for the throne, or for the cause of religion and of public order, unless the armies of France should restore Ferdinand, then a virtual prisoner in his own palace, to the government he had inherited.
The war was decided upon, and the Duke of Angoulême, nephew of the king, was sent across the Pyrenees with one hundred thousand troops to put down the innumerable factions, and reseat Ferdinand. The Duke was assisted, of course, by all the royalists of Spain, by all the clergy, and by all conservative parties; and the conquest of the kingdom was comparatively easy. The republican chiefs were taken and hanged, including Diego, the ablest of them all. Ferdinand, delivered by foreign armies, remounted his throne, forgot all his pledges, and reigned on the most despotic principles, committing the most atrocious cruelties. The successful general returned to France with great éclat, while the government was pushed every day by the triumphant Royalists into increased severity,--into measures which logically led, under Charles X., to his expulsion from the throne, and the final defeat of the principle of legitimacy itself,--another great step toward republican institutions, which were finally destined to triumph.
Among the extreme measures was the Septennial Bill, which passed both houses against the protest of liberal members, some of whom afterward became famous,--such as General Foy, General Sebastiani, Dupont (de l'Eure), Casimir Périer, Lafitte, Lanjuinais. This law was a coup d'état against electoral opinions and representative government. It gave the king and his government the advantage of fixing for seven years longer the majority which was secured by the elections of 1822, and of closing the Chamber against a modification of public opinions. Villèle and Chateaubriand were the authors of this act.
Another bill was proposed by Villèle, not so objectionable, which was to reduce the interest on the loans contracted by the State; in other words, to borrow money at less interest and pay off the old debts,--a salutary financial measure adopted in England, and later by the United States after the Civil War. But this measure was bitterly opposed by the clergy, who looked upon it as a reduction of their incomes. Here Chateaubriand virtually abandoned the government, in his uniform support of the temporalities of the Church; and the measure failed; which so deeply exasperated both the king and the prime minister that Chateaubriand was dismissed from his office as minister of foreign affairs.
The fallen minister angrily resented his disgrace, and thenceforward secretly took part against the government, embarrassing it by his articles in the journals of the day. He did not renounce his conservative opinions; but he became the personal enemy of Villèle. Chateaubriand had no magnanimity. He retired to nurse his resentments in the society of Madame Récamier, with whom he had formed a friendship difficult to be distinguished from love. He had been always her devoted admirer when she reigned a queen of society in the fashionable salons of Paris, and continued his intimacy with her until his death. Daily did he, when a broken old man, make his accustomed visit to her modest apartments in the Convent of St. Joseph, and give vent to his melancholy and morbid feelings. He regarded himself as the most injured man in France. He became discontented with the Crown, and even with the aristocracy. On the day of his retirement from the ministry the intelligence of the Royalist party followed him in opposition to the government, whose faults he had encouraged and shared. The "Journal des Débats," the most influential newspaper in France, deserted Villèle; and from this defection may be dated, says Lamartine, "all those enmities against the government of the Restoration which collected in one work of aggression the most contradictory ideas, which alienated public opinion, which exasperated the government and pushed it on from excesses to insanity, irritated the tribune, blindfolded the elections, and finished by changing, five years afterward, the opposition of nineteen votes hostile to the Bourbons into a heterogeneous but formidable majority, in presence of which the monarchy had only the choice left between a humiliating resignation and a mortal coup d'état."
Chateaubriand now disappears from the field of history as one of its great figures. He lived henceforth in retirement, but bitter in his opposition to the government of which he had been the virtual head, contributing largely to the "Journal des Débats," of which he was the life, and by which he was supported. In the next reign he refused the office of Minister of Public Instruction as derogatory to his dignity, but accepted the post of ambassador to Rome,--a sort of honorable exile. But he was an unhappy and disappointed man; he had taken the wrong side in politics, and probably saw his errors. His genius, if it had been directed to secure constitutional liberty, would have made him a national idol, for he lived to see the dethronement of Louis Philippe in 1848; but like Castlereagh in England, he threw his superb talents in with the sinking cause of absolutism, and was after all a political failure. He lives only as a literary man,--one of the most eloquent poets of his day, one of the lights of that splendid constellation of literary geniuses that arose on the fall of Napoleon.
Soon after the retirement of Chateaubriand, Louis XVIII. himself died, at an advanced age, having contrived to preserve his throne by moderation and honesty. In his latter days he was exceedingly infirm in body, but preserved his intellectual faculties to the last. He was a lonely old man, even while surrounded by a splendid court. He wanted somebody to love, at least to cheer him in his isolation; for he had no peace in his family, deeply as he was attached to its members. He himself had discovered the virtues and disinterestedness of his minister Décazes, and when his family and ministers drove away this favorite, the king was devoted to him even in disgrace, and made him his companion. Still later he found a substitute in Madame du Caylus,--one of those interesting and accomplished women peculiar to France. She was not ambitious of ruling the king, as her aunt, Madame de Maintenon, was of governing Louis XIV., and her virtue was unimpeachable. She wrote to the king letters twice a day, but visited him only once a week. She was the tool of a cabal, rather than the leader of a court; but her influence was healthy, ennobling, and religious. Louis XVIII. was not what would be called a religious man; he performed his religious duties regularly, but in a perfunctory manner. He was not, however, a hypocrite or a pharisee, but was simply indifferent to religious dogmas, and secretly averse to the society of priests. When he was dying, it was with great difficulty that he could be made to receive extreme unction. He died without pain, recommending to his brother, who was to succeed him, to observe the charter of French liberties, yet fearing that his blind bigotry would be the ruin of the family and the throne, as events proved. The last things to which the dying king clung were pomps and ceremonies, concealing even from courtiers his failing strength, and going through the mockery of dress and court etiquette to almost the very day of his death, in 1824.