CHAPTER XLIII
The final resurrection and triumph of Napoleon no one could foresee on March 31, 1814, when he lay in a stupor of weariness and soul-sickness at Fontainebleau, while the Allies were entering Paris.
It was a sad day out there at the old palace; in the capital was spasmodic jubilation. Talleyrand, of the Council of Regency, had managed to remain in Paris when the Empress fled. Talleyrand became the moving spirit of royalist intrigue. He may not have intended the return of the Bourbons, may have been tricked by Vitrolles as Lord Holland relates; but he had meant all the while to overthrow Napoleon, and had countenanced, if not suggested, plans for his assassination.
To prove to Czar Alexander that France hungered and thirsted for the Bourbons, Talleyrand got up cavalcades of young aristocrats who rode about shouting, “Down with the tyrant! Long live Louis XVIII.!” High-born ladies, also, began to take active part in the business, it being an axiom with Talleyrand that if you wish to accomplish anything important, you “must set the women going.” Ladies of the old nobility, elegantly dressed, were in the streets, distributing white cockades, and drumming up recruits. Royalism and clericalism bugled for all their forces; and while Napoleon’s friends, disorganized, awaited leaders, the day was carried for the Bourbons.
So that when the Allies marched into Paris, as masters, on March 31, 1814, the royalist faction welcomed the invaders as “Liberators.”
How had these royalists got back to France, to freedom, and to wealth? Through the magnanimity of “the tyrant” whom it was now so easy to abuse. How had those high-priests of the Church, who were Talleyrand’s aides in treachery, regained their places, their influence, their splendid importance? Through the leniency of the man who was now abandoned, denounced, sold to the enemies of France.
And how had the wars commenced which Napoleon had inherited, and which he had never been able to end? By the determination of kings and aristocracies to check the spread of French principles, to crush democracy in its birth, and to restore to its old place organized superstition, class-privilege, and the divine right of kings. In the long fight, the new doctrine had gone down; and the old had risen again. Royalists, clericals, class-worshippers, fell into transports of joy. Glorious Easter, with a sun-burst, flooded them with light. They thronged the streets in gala dress; they filled the air with glad outcry; they kissed the victor’s bloody hand, and hailed him as a god.
They followed Czar Alexander through the streets to Talleyrand’s house, with such extravagance of joyful demonstration that you might have thought him a French hero fresh from victories won over foreign foes. Cossacks, driving before them French prisoners, were enthusiastically cheered as they passed through the streets. Aristocratic women, by the hundred, trooped after the foreigners who led the parade, threw themselves with embraces upon the horses, and kissed the very boots of the riders. And these troops, mark you, were those who had made havoc in the provinces of France, with a ferocity and a lust which had not only wreaked its fill upon helpless maid and matron, but had revelled in the sport of compelling fathers, husbands, and sons to witness what they could neither prevent nor revenge, and which had coldly slain the victims after the bestial appetite had been glutted.
Cheer the Cossack bands as they prod with lances the bleeding French captives who have seen their homes burnt, and their wives and daughters violated and butchered! Hug the horses, and kiss the feet of the foreigners who have come to beat down your people, change your government, quell your democracy, force back into power a king and a system that had led the nation to misery and shame!