Quite recently the French Government conferred the Cross of the Legion of Honour on the town of Belfort, and on Rambervillers, a small place in the Vosges Mountains, as a recognition of the gallant resistance they offered to the Germans in 1870 and 1871. Belfort surrendered only under orders from the French Government, the peace armistice having been concluded. Its garrison left with the honours of war, and, although part of Alsace, it was left to France on account of the indomitable courage of Colonel Denfert-Rochereau (a Protestant of Rochelle), of the garrison, and also of the townspeople, who allowed their houses to be battered to pieces without once speaking of capitulation. The town of Châteaudun was “decorated” with the Legion of Honour by Gambetta, having signalized itself by its resistance to the invader, followed by reprisals. Two or three other towns were decorated with the National Order of Knighthood by Napoleon I. in 1815 for heroic resistance to the Allies in 1814. Altogether nine towns in France have the Cross of the Legion of Honour on their coats-of-arms.
Another feature in Napoleonic heraldry was the revival of an ancient ordinary, entitled champagne, occupying a third of the shield in base; it frequently occurs in arms granted under the Empire, but is now obsolete. In fact, on the restoration of Louis XVIII., an ordinance was issued abolishing all the innovations introduced by Napoleon, some of which deserved a better fate.
One of the most delightful traits in the character of the French people is their readiness to laugh at their own little national failings, their vanity, their volatility, and their political instability.
This power to see and appreciate the humorous side of events was never better shown than in a work entitled “Dictionnaire des Girouettes ou nos contemporains peints d’après eux-mêmes,” published in Paris, anonymously, but ascribed to the Comte de Proisy d’Eppe.
This little book is at once one of the most comical and one of the saddest ever written, being a kind of biographical dictionary of the political turncoats of the period embraced between the years 1790 and 1815. It contains notices of all the leading Frenchmen of the day, with extracts from their political writings and speeches, more especially those containing allusions, complimentary or the reverse, to the heads of the Government. Now, when we consider that during that quarter of a century France experienced a number of sudden and violent changes in her political constitution, going from the extreme of absolute Monarchy to the utmost licence of Republican liberty, it will easily be recognized that this book contains instances of the most astounding weakness of character and political vacillation ever chronicled.
Starting from 1790, when the Government was Royalist, indeed an absolute Monarchy, in 1792 it became Republican, under the Convention, and later, in 1795, under le Directoire.
1799. The Consulate. Napoleon First Consul.
1804. Imperial. Napoleon Emperor.
1814. Royalist again. Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, Louis XVIII.
1815. The Hundred Days. Flight of the Bourbons, restoration of Napoleon.