Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.

by Walter Scott

These considerations speedily determined the Jacobin party on a union with the Buonapartists. The former were in the condition of a band of housebreakers, who, unable to force an entrance into the house which they have the purpose to break into, renew their undertaking, and place at their head a brother of the same profession, because he has the advantage of having a crow-bar in his hand. When and how this league was formed—what sanction the Jacobin party obtained that Buonaparte, dethroned as a military despot, was to resume his dignity under constitutional restrictions, we have no opportunity of knowing. But so soon as the coalition was formed, his praises were sung forth on all sides, especially by many who had been, as Jacobins, his most decided enemies; and a great part of the French public were disposed to think of Buonaparte at Elba more favourably than Napoleon in the Tuileries. Gradually, even from the novelty and peculiarity of his situation, he began to excite a very different interest from that which attached to the despot who levied so many conscriptions, and sacrificed to his ambition so many millions of victims. Every instance of his activity, within the little circle of his dominions, was contrasted by his admirers with the constitutional inertness of the restored monarch. Excelling as much in the arts of peace as in those of war, it wanted but (they said) the fostering hand and unwearied eye of Napoleon to have rendered France the envy of the universe, had his military affairs permitted the leisure and opportunity which the Bourbons now enjoyed. These allegations, secretly insinuated, and at length loudly murmured, had their usual effects upon the fickle temper of the public; and, as the temporary enthusiasm in favour of the Bourbons faded into indifference and aversion, the general horror of Buonaparte's ambitious and tyrannical disposition began to give way to the recollection of his active, energetic, and enterprising qualities.

This change must soon have been known to him who was its object. An expression is said to have escaped from him during his passage to Elba, which marked at least a secret feeling that he might one day recover the high dignity from which he had fallen. "If Marius," he observed, "had slain himself in the marshes of Minturnæ, he would never have enjoyed his seventh consulate." What was perhaps originally but the vague aspirations of an ardent spirit striving against adversity, became, from the circumstances of France, a plausible and well-grounded hope. It required but to establish communications among his numerous and zealous partisans, with instructions to hold out such hopes as might lure the Jacobins to his standard, and to profit by and inflame the growing discontents and divisions of France; and a conspiracy was almost ready formed, with little exertion on the part of him who soon became its object and its centre.

Various affiliations and points of rendezvous were now arranged to recruit for partisans. The ladies of the Ex-Emperor's court, who found themselves humiliated at that of the King by the preference assigned to noble birth, were zealous agents in these political intrigues, for offended pride hesitates at no measures for obtaining vengeance. The purses of their husbands and lovers were of course open to these fair intriguers, and many of them devoted their jewels to forward the cause of Revolution. The chief of these female conspirators was Hortensia Beauharnois, wife of Louis Buonaparte, but now separated from her husband, and bearing the title of the Duchess of Saint Leu. She was a person of considerable talents, and of great activity and address. At Nanterre, Neuilly, and Saint Leu, meetings of the conspirators were held, and Madame Hamelin, the confidant of the duchess, is said to have assisted in concealing some of the principal agents.

The Duchess of Bassano, and the Duchess of Montebello (widow of Maréchal Lannes,) were warmly engaged in the same cause. At the meetings held in the houses of these intriguing females, the whole artillery of conspiracy was forged and put in order, from the political lie, which does its work if believed but for an hour, to the political song or squib, which, like the fire-work from which it derives its name, expresses love of frolic or of mischief, according to the nature of the materials amongst which it is thrown. From these places of rendezvous the agents of the plot sallied out upon their respective rounds, furnished with every lure that could rouse the suspicious landholder, attract the idle Parisian, seduce the Ideologue, who longed to try the experiments of his Utopian theories upon real government, and above all, secure the military—from the officer, before whose eyes truncheons, coronets, and even crowns, were disposed in ideal prospect, to the grenadier, whose hopes only aimed at blood, brandy, and free quarters.

RICHARD LE NOIR.

The lower orders of the populace, particularly those inhabiting the two great suburbs of Saint Marceau and Saint Antoine, were disposed to the cause from their natural restlessness and desire of change; from the apprehension that the King would discontinue the expensive buildings in which Buonaparte was wont to employ them; from a Jacobinical dislike to the lawful title of Louis, joined to some tender aspirations after the happy days of liberty and equality; and lastly, from the disposition which the lees of society every where manifest to get rid of the law, their natural curb and enemy. The influence of Richard le Noir was particularly useful to the conspirators. He was a wealthy cotton-manufacturer, who combined and disciplined no less than three thousand workmen in his employment, so as to be ready at the first signal of the conspirators. Le Noir was called by the Royalists Santerre the Second; being said to aspire, like that celebrated suburban brewer, to become a general of Sans Culottes. He was bound to Buonaparte's interest by his daughter having married General Lefebvre Desnouettes, who was not the less the favourite of Napoleon that he had broken his parole, and fled from England when a prisoner of war. Thus agitated like a lake by a subterranean earthquake, revolutionary movements began to show themselves amongst the populace. At times, under pretence of scarcity of bread or employment, tumultuous groups assembled on the terrace of the Tuileries, with clamours which reminded the Duchess D'Angoulême of those that preceded the imprisonment and death of her parents. The police dispersed them for the moment; but if any arrests were made, it was only of such wretches as shouted when they heard others shout, and no efforts were made to ascertain the real cause of symptoms so alarming.

The police of Paris was at this time under the direction of M. D'André, formerly a financier. His loyalty does not seem to have been doubted, but his prudence and activity are very questionable; nor does he seem ever to have been completely master either of the duties of his office, or the tools by which it was to be performed. These tools, in other words, the subordinate agents and officers and clerks, the whole machinery as it were of the police, had remained unchanged since that dreadful power was administered by Savary, Buonaparte's head spy and confidential minister. This body, as well as the army, felt that their honourable occupation was declined in emolument and importance since the fall of Buonaparte, and looked back with regret to the days when they were employed in agencies, dark, secret, and well-recompensed, unknown to a peaceful and constitutional administration. Like evil spirits employed by the spells of a benevolent enchanter, these police officers seem to have served the King grudgingly and unwillingly; to have neglected their duty, when that could be done with impunity; and to have shown that they had lost their activity and omniscience, so soon as embarked in the service of legitimate monarchy.

Under the connivance, therefore, if not with the approbation of the police, conspiracy assumed a more open and daring aspect. Several houses of dubious fame, but especially the Café Montaussier, in the Palais Royal, were chosen as places of rendezvous for the subordinate satellites of the cause, where the toasts given, the songs sung, the tunes performed, and the language held, all bore allusion to Buonaparte's glories, his regretted absence, and his desired return. To express their hopes that this event would take place in the spring, the conspirators adopted for their symbol the violet; and afterwards applied to Buonaparte himself the name of Corporal Violet. The flower and the colour were publicly worn as a party distinction, before it would seem the court had taken the least alarm; and the health of Buonaparte, under the name of Corporal Violet, or Jean d'Epée, was pledged by many a Royalist without suspicion of the concealed meaning.

Paris was the centre of the conspiracy; but its ramifications extended through France. Clubs were formed in the chief provincial towns. Regular correspondences were established between them and the capital—an intercourse much favoured, it has been asserted, by Lavalette, who, having been long director-general of the posts under Buonaparte, retained considerable influence over the subordinate agents of that department, none of whom had been displaced upon the King's return. It appears from the evidence of M. Ferrand, director-general under the King, that the couriers, who, like the soldiers and police officers, had found more advantage under the imperial than under the royal government, were several of them in the interest of their old master. And it is averred, that the correspondence relating to the conspiracy was carried on through the royal post-office, contained in letters sealed with the King's seal, and despatched by public messengers wearing his livery.

Such open demonstrations of treasonable practices did not escape the observation of the Royalists, and they appear to have been communicated to the ministers from different quarters. Nay, it has been confidently stated, that letters, containing information of Napoleon's intended escape, were actually found in the bureau of one minister, unopened and unread. Indeed, each of these official personages seems scrupulously to have intrenched himself within the routine of his own particular department, so that what was only of general import to the whole, was not considered as the business of any one in particular. Thus, when the stunning catastrophe had happened, each endeavoured to shift the blame from himself, like the domestics in a large and ill-regulated family; and although all acknowledged that gross negligence had existed elsewhere, no one admitted that the fault lay with himself. This general infatuation surprises us upon retrospect; but Heaven, who frequently punishes mankind by the indulgence of their own foolish or wicked desires, had decreed that peace was to be restored to Europe, by the extermination of that army to whom peace was a state so odious; and for that purpose it was necessary that they should be successful in their desperate attempt to dethrone their peaceful and constitutional sovereign, and to reinstate the despotic leader, who was soon to lead them to the completion of their destiny, and of his own.