THE JACOBINS.
Whilst the Royalists rather sapped and encumbered than supported the throne to which they adhered, their errors were carefully pointed out, circulated, and exaggerated, by the Jacobin, or as they called themselves, the Patriotic party. This faction, small in numbers, but formidable from their audacity, their union, and the dreadful recollection of their former power and principles, consisted of ex-generals, whose laurels had faded with the Republic; ex-ministers and functionaries, whose appointments and influence had not survived the downfall of the Directory; men of letters, who hoped again to rule the state by means of proclamations and journals; and philosophers, to whose vanity or enthusiasm abstract principles of unattainable liberty, and undesirable equality, were dearer than all the oceans of blood, and extent of guilt and misery, which they had already cost, and were likely again to occasion. It cannot be denied, that, in the discussion of the original rights of humanity, and constitutions of society, several of this party showed distinguished talent, and that their labours were calculated to keep up a general love of liberty, and to promote inquiry into the principles upon which it is founded. Unfortunately, however, their theoretical labours in framing constitutions diverted their attention from the essential points of government, to its mere external form, and led them, for example, to prefer a republic, where every species of violence was practised by the little dictator of the day, to a limited monarchy, under which life, person, and property, were protected. The chiefs of this party were men of that presumptuous and undoubting class, who, after having failed repeatedly in political experiments, were as ready as ever again to undertake them, with the same unhesitating and self-deceptive confidence of success. They were never satisfied even with what they themselves had done; for as there is no end of aiming at an ideal perfection in any human establishment, they proceeded with alterations on their own work, as if what Butler says of religion had been true in politics, and that a form of government
"was intended
For nothing else but to be mended."
Danger did not appal the sages of this school. Many of them had been familiar with, and hardened to the perils of the most desperate revolutionary intrigues, by their familiar acquaintance with the springs which set each in motion, and were ready to recommence their desperate labours with as little forethought as belongs to the labourers in a powder-mill, which has exploded ten times during their remembrance, and destroyed the greater number of their comrades. In the character of these self-entitled philosophers and busy agitators, vanity as well as egotism were leading principles. The one quality persuaded them, that they might be able, by dint of management, to avert danger from themselves; and the other rendered them indifferent respecting the safety of others.
During the government of Buonaparte, this Jacobinical party was repressed by a strong hand. He knew, by experience of every sort, their restless, intriguing, and dangerous disposition. They also knew and feared his strength, and his unscrupulous use of it. The return of the Bourbons called them into life, like the sun which thaws the frozen adder; but it was only to show how they hated the beams which revived them. The Bourbon dynasty, with all the remembrances it combined, seemed to this faction the very opposite to their favourite Revolution; and they studied with malignant assiduity the degree of liberty afforded by the national charter, not in order to defend or to enjoy it, but to discover how it might be made the vantage-ground for overthrowing both the throne and the constitution.
Carnot and Fouché, formidable names, and revolutionists from their youth upward, were the ostensible leaders of this active party, and most of the surviving revolutionists rallied under their standards. These agitators had preserved some influence over the lees of the people, and were sure to find the means of augmenting it in the moment of popular commotion. The rabble of a great town is democratical and revolutionary by nature; for their vanity is captivated with such phrases as the sovereignty of the people, their sense of poverty and licentious fury tempted by occasion for uproar, and they regard the restraints of laws and good order as their constant and natural enemies. It is upon this envenomed and corrupted mass of evil passions that the experimental philosophers of the Revolution have always exercised their chemical skill. Of late, however, the intercourse between the philosophers of the Revolution and this class of apt and docile scholars had been considerably interrupted. Buonaparte, as we have hinted, restrained with a strong hand the teachers of the Revolutionary school; while, by the eclat of his victories, his largesses, and his expensive undertakings, in which many workmen were employed, he debauched from them great part of their popular disciples, who may be said, with the inconsequence and mutability belonging to their habits, principles, and temper, to have turned imperialists, without losing their natural aptitude to become Jacobins again on the next tempting opportunity.
BUONAPARTISTS—THE ARMY.
The party of Imperialists or Buonapartists, if we lay the army out of view, was small and unimportant. The public functionaries, whom the King had displaced from the situations of emolument which they held under the Emperor—courtiers, prefects, commissioners, clerks, and commissaries—whose present means and future hopes were cut off, were of course disobliged and discontented men, who looked with a languishing eye towards the island of Elba. The immediate family connexions, favourites, and ministers of the late Emperor, confident in the wealth which most of them had acquired, and resenting the insignificance to which they were reduced by the restoration of the Bourbons, lent to this party the activity which money, and the habit of political intrigue, can at all times communicate. But the real and tremendous strength of the Buonapartists lay in the attachment of the existing army to its abdicated general. This was the more formidable, as the circumstances of the times, and the prevailing military character of the French nation, had raised the soldiers from their proper and natural character of servants of the state, into a distinct deliberative body, having interests of their own, which were in their nature incompatible with those of the commonwealth; since the very profession of arms implies an aptitude to a state of war, which, to all other ranks in the state, the army itself excepted, may indeed be a necessary and unavoidable evil, but never can be a real advantage.
The King could not be accused of neglecting to cultivate the affections, soothe the prejudices, and gratify the wishes of the army. The fact is, that the unprecedented difficulties of his situation forced him to study how to manage by flattery, and by the most imprudent indulgences and favours, the only part of his subjects, who, according to the rules of all well-governed states, ought to be subjected to absolute authority. Every effort was made to gratify the feelings of the troops, and the utmost exertions were made to remount, re-establish, and re-clothe them. Their ranks were augmented by upwards of 150,000 prisoners of war, whose minds were in general actuated by the desire of avenging the dishonour and hardship of their defeat and captivity, and whose presence greatly increased the discontent as well as the strength of the French army.
While the King cultivated the affections of the common soldiers with very imperfect success, he was more fortunate in attaching to himself the maréchals, whom he treated with the utmost respect and kindness. They were gratified by his attentions, and, having most of them some recent reason to complain of Napoleon, it is possible, that had they possessed absolute, or even very extensive interest with the army, that disturbance in the state of the nation which ensued, could not possibly have taken place. But while Napoleon had preserved towards the maréchals the distance at which a sovereign keeps subjects, he was often familiar with the inferior officers and soldiers, and took care to keep himself in their eye, and occupy their attention personally. He desired that his generals should resemble the hilt of the sword, which may be changed at pleasure, while the army was the blade itself, and retained the same temper, notwithstanding such partial alteration. Thus, the direct and personal interest of the Emperor superseded, in the soldier's bosom, all attachment to his lieutenants.