The plan which Fouché recommended to the King was, as might have been expected, astucious and artificial in a high degree. He advised the King to assume the national cockade and three-coloured flag; to occupy the situation of chief of the Revolution. This, he said, would be the same sacrifice by Louis XVIII. as the attending on the mass by Henry IV.—He might have added, it was the sacrifice actually made by Louis XVI., who lost his life in requital.—What Fouché aimed at by this action is evident. He desired to place the King in a situation where he must have relied exclusively on the men of the Revolution, with whom he could not have communicated save by the medium of the Duc d'Otranto, who thus would become prime minister at the first step. But in every other point of view, the following that advice must have placed the King in a mean and hypocritical attitude, which must have disgusted even those whom it was adopted to conciliate.
By assuming the colours of the Revolution, the King of France must necessarily have stained himself with the variation of each of its numerous changes. It is true that the Revolution had produced many excellent improvements in France, affecting both the theory and the practice of government. These the sovereign was bound carefully to preserve for the advantage of the nation. But while we are grateful for the advantages of increased health and fertility that may follow a tornado, and treasure up the valuable things which an angry ocean may cast upon the shore, none but a blinded heathen worships the tempest, or sacrifices to the furious waves. The King, courting the murderers of his brother, could inspire, even in them, nothing save disgust at his hypocrisy, while it would justly have forfeited the esteem and affection, not of the royalists alone, but of all honest men.
Further to recommend himself to the Bourbons, Fouché addressed a singular epistle to Napoleon, in which he endeavoured to convince him, that the title of sovereign, in the paltry islet of Elba, did not become him who had possessed an immense empire. He remarked to Napoleon, that the situation of the island was not suitable to his purpose of retirement, being near so many points where his presence might produce dangerous agitation. He observed that he might be accused, although he was not criminal, and do evil without intending it, by spreading alarm. He hinted that the King of France, however determined to act with justice, yet might be instigated by the passions of others to break through that rule. He told the Ex-Emperor of France, that the titles which he retained were only calculated to augment his regret for the loss of real sovereignty. Nay, that they were attended with positive danger, since it might be thought they were retained only to keep alive his pretensions. Lastly, he exhorted Napoleon to assume the character of a private individual, and retire to the United States of America, the country of Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson.[89]
Fouché could scarcely expect that this monitory epistle should have much effect upon his once imperial master; he knew human nature and Buonaparte too well. But as it might tell to advantage with the royal family, he sent a copy of it to Monsieur, with a corresponding commentary, the object of which was to point out (what, indeed, circumstances had made evident,) that the tranquillity of the countries and sovereigns of Europe could never be secured while Napoleon remained in his present condition, and that his residence in the isle of Elba was to France what Vesuvius is to Naples.[90] The practical inference to be derived from this was, that a gentle degree of violence to remove the person of Napoleon would have been a stroke of state policy, in case the Ex-Emperor of France should not himself have the patriotic virtue to remove himself to America. The honourable and generous prince, to whom Fouché had addressed himself, had too noble a mind to adopt the hint; and this attempt to ingratiate himself with the Bourbon family entirely failed. But plotting was Fouché's element; and it seems to have signified little to him whom he had for partners, providing he had a stake in the political game. He retired to his country-house, and engaged himself with his old friends of the Jacobin party, who were not a little glad to avail themselves of his extensive acquaintance with all the ramifications of political intrigue.
PROJECTS OF THE JACOBINS.
It was the policy of this party to insist upon the faults of the royal family, and enlarge on their prejudices against the men and measures of that period when France was successful in foreign war, against the statesman who directed, and the soldiers who achieved her gigantic enterprises. The King, they said, had suffered misfortune without having learned wisdom; he was incapable of stepping beyond the circle of his Gothic prejudices; France had received him from the hand of foreign conquerors, surrounded by an emaciated group of mendicant nobles, whose pretensions were as antiquated and absurd as their decorations and manners. His government went to divide, they alleged, the French into two classes, opposed to each other in merits as in interests;—the emigrants, who alone were regarded by Louis as faithful and willing subjects; and the rest of the nation, in whom the Bourbons saw, at best, but repentant rebels. They asserted, that, too timid as yet to strike an open blow, the King and his ministers sought every means to disqualify and displace all who had taken any active share in the events of the Revolution, and to evade the general promise of amnesty. Under pretext of national economy, they were disbanding the army, and removing the officers of government—depriving thus the military and civil servants of France of the provision which their long services had earned. Louis, they said, had insulted the glory of France, and humiliated her heroes, by renouncing the colours and symbols under which twenty-five years had seen her victorious; he had rudely refused a crown offered to him by the people, and snatched it as his own right by inheritance, as if the dominion of men could be transferred from father to son like the property of a flock of sheep. The right of Frenchmen to choose their own ruler was hereditary and imprescriptible; and the nation, they said, must assert it, or sink to be the contempt, instead of being the pride at once and dread of Europe.
Such was the language which nettled, while it alarmed, the idle Parisians, who forgot at the moment that they had seen Napoleon take the crown from the altar at Notre Dame, and place it on his own head, with scarcely an acknowledgment to God, and not the shadow of any towards the nation. The departments were assailed by other arts of instigation. The chief of these was directed to excite the jealousy, so often alluded to, concerning the security of the property of national domains. Not content with urging everywhere that a revocation of the lands of the Church and emigrants was impending over the present proprietors, and that the clergy and nobles did not even deign to conceal their hopes and designs, a singular device was in many instances practised to enforce the belief of such assertions. Secret agents were despatched into the departments where property was advertised for sale. These emissaries made inquiries as if in the character of intending purchasers, and where the property appeared to have been derived from revolutionary confiscation, instantly objected to the security as good for nothing, and withdrew their pretended offers;—thus impressing the proprietor, and all in the same situation, with the unavoidable belief, that such title was considered as invalid, owing to the expected and menaced revocation of the Bourbon government.
It is generally believed that Buonaparte was not originally the object designed to profit by these intrigues. He was feared and hated by the Jacobin party, who knew what a slender chance his iron government afforded of their again attempting to rear their fantastic fabrics, whether of a pure republic, or a republican monarchy. It is supposed their eyes were turned in preference towards the Duke of Orleans. They reckoned probably on the strength of the temptation, and they thought, that in supplanting Louis XVIII., and placing his kinsman in his room, they would obtain, on the one hand, a king who should hold his power by and through the Revolution, and, on the other, that they would conciliate both foreign powers and the constitutionalists at home, by choosing their sovereign out of the family of Bourbon. The more cautious of those concerned in the intrigue, recommended that nothing should be attempted during the life of the reigning monarch; others were more impatient and less cautious; and the prince alluded to received an intimation of their plan in an unsigned billet, containing only these words—"We will act it without you; we will act it in spite of you; we will act it FOR you;"[91] as if putting it in his choice to be the leader or victim of the intended revolution.
JACOBINS—BUONAPARTISTS.
The Duke of Orleans was too upright and honourable to be involved in this dark and mysterious scheme; he put the letter which he had received into the hands of the King, and acted otherwise with so much prudence, as to destroy all the hopes which the revolutionary party had founded upon him. It was necessary to find out some other central point. Some proposed Eugene Beauharnois as the hero of the projected movement;[92] some projected a provisional government; and others desired that the republican model should be once more adopted. But none of these plans were likely to be favoured by the army. The cry of Vive la Republique had become antiquated; the power once possessed by the Jacobins of creating popular commotion was greatly diminished; and although the army was devoted to Buonaparte, yet it was probable that in a civil commotion in which he had no interest, they would follow the maréchals or generals who commanded them, in opposition to any insurrection merely revolutionary. If, on the contrary, the interests of Napoleon were put in the van, there was no fear of securing the irresistible assistance of the standing army. If he came back with the same principles of absolute power which he had formerly entertained, still the Jacobins would get rid of Louis and the charter, the two chief objects of their hatred; the former as a King given by the law, the latter as a law given by the King.