God had pronounced one of those words by which the silence of eternity is at rare intervals interrupted. Then, in the midst of the present generation, rose the hammer that struck the hour which Paris had only once heard sound: on the 25th of December 496, Rheims announced the baptism of Clovis, and the gates of Lutetia opened to the Franks; on the 30th of March 1814, after the baptism of blood of Louis XVI., the old hammer, which had so long remained motionless, rose once more in the belfry of the ancient monarchy: a second stroke resounded, the Tartars penetrated into Paris. In the interval of thirteen hundred and eighteen years, the foreigner had insulted the walls of the capital of our empire without ever being able to enter it, except when he glided in, summoned by our own divisions. The Normans besieged the city of the Parisii; the Parisii gave flight to the hawks which they carried on their wrists; Odo[128], child of Paris and future King, "rex futurus," Abbon[129] says, drove back the pirates of the North: the Parisians let fly their eagles in 1814; the Allies entered the Louvre.
Bonaparte had waged an unjust war against Alexander, his admirer, who had begged on his knees for peace; Bonaparte had ordered the carnage of the Moskowa; he had forced the Russians themselves to bum Moscow; Bonaparte had plundered Berlin, humiliated its King, insulted its Queen[130]: what reprisals were we, then, to expect? You shall see.
I had wandered in the Floridas round unknown monuments, devastated of old by conquerors of whom no trace remains, and I was saved for the sight of the Caucasian hordes encamped in the court-yard of the Louvre. In those events of history which, according to Montaigne, "are but weake testimonies of our worth and capacity[131]," my tongue cleaves to my palate: adhæret lingua mea faucibus meis.[132]
The Allied Army entered Paris on the 31st of March 1814, at mid-day, ten days only after the anniversary of the death of the Duc d'Enghien, 21 March 1804. Was it worth Bonaparte's while to commit an action of such long remembrance for a reign which was to last so short a time? The Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia rode at the head of their troops. I saw them defile along the boulevards. Feeling stupefied and dumfoundered within myself, as though my name as a Frenchman had been tom from me to substitute for it the name by which I was thenceforth to be known in the mines of Siberia, I felt, at the same time, my exasperation increase against the man whose glory had reduced us to that disgrace.
Nevertheless, this first invasion of the Allies has remained unparalleled in the annals of the world: order, peace and moderation reigned on every hand; the shops were re-opened; Russian guardsmen, six feet tall, were piloted through the streets by little French rogues who made fun of them, as of jumping-jacks and carnival maskers. The conquered might be taken for the conquerors; the latter, trembling at their successes, looked as though they were excusing themselves. The National Guard alone garrisoned the interior of Paris, with the exception of the houses in which the foreign Kings and Princes were lodged[133]. On the 31st of March 1814, countless armies were occupying France; a few months later all those troops passed back across our frontiers, without firing a musket-shot, without shedding a drop of blood after the return of the Bourbons. Old France found herself enlarged on some of her frontiers; the ships and stores of Antwerp were divided with her; three hundred thousand prisoners, scattered over the countries where victory or defeat had left them, were restored to her. After five and twenty years of fighting, the clash of arms ceased from one end of Europe to the other. Alexander departed, leaving us the master-pieces which we had conquered and the liberty lodged in the Charter, a liberty which we owed as much to his enlightenment as to his influence. The head of two supreme authorities, twice an autocrat by the sword and by religion, he alone, of all the sovereigns of Europe, had understood that, at the age of civilization which France had attained, she could be governed only by virtue of a free constitution.
In our very natural hostility to the foreigners, we have confused the invasion of 1814 and that of 1815, which were in no sense alike.
The Emperor Alexander.
Alexander looked upon himself merely as an instrument of Providence, and took no credit to himself. When Madame de Staël complimented him upon the happiness which his subjects, lacking a constitution, enjoyed of being governed by him, he made his well-known reply:
"I am only a 'fortunate accident.'"
A young man in the streets of Paris expressed to him his admiration at the affability with which he received the least of the citizens; he replied: