Exile had broken the spirit but had neither softened the hearts nor enlightened the minds of the long-banished aristocracy and their friends. The new society looked on the thousands and thousands of returned emigrants with some pity and much indifference as they wandered about Paris and the other cities in faded, worn, old-fashioned garb. Their abodes were in garrets and cellars, their ancient titles were carefully concealed; the few who were recognized and betrayed by some vindictive spy were persecuted by legal tricks even to death, and the rest were cowed. Their cowardly precipitate flight had saved their lives, but it had destroyed their king, their honor, and their self-respect. Artois at Turin, Condé at Worms, the petty nobles at Coblentz, the great ones at Brussels, the clergy in England with their adherents, grandees and gentlemen; each of these groups had suffered in a different way from the rest, but all had finally found themselves objects of suspicion to their hosts, and had long since been reduced to an ignoble poverty. The employment in foreign armies for which they had hoped was so guardedly measured to them that their services were inappreciably small. They had been driven for support to teaching and other such noble employments as they could secure, then by a sure descent many became artisans, craftsmen, and even menials, but, failing that, they were frequently reduced to base mendicity, holding their hands for the alms which their sad appearance and murmured pleas drew from the passers-by. This was particularly the case at Hamburg, where twenty-five thousand took refuge, and at Erlangen in Bavaria. But they had scattered everywhere and had been a byword in all Europe.

Nevertheless, throughout Convention, Terror, and Directory they had cherished high hopes, preserved some forms of courtliness and organization, had kept their anniversaries, their military style, and even a formal system, social and military; had dreamed of a restoration in full form and a return to one-time wealth, dignity, and social power; political power they had not had within the memories of men, ecclesiastical power they enjoyed not as Frenchmen but as Romanists. Their old-time merry arrogance had given place to an acrid humor born of hunger and want, but they kept their temper and ambition in spite of the mistakes they committed and heaped one upon another, cradling their own hopes in the disasters of the Directory, which so outdid their own as to insure, they were convinced, the reëstablishment of monarchy. Brumaire and its consequences opened their eyes and confounded their plans; every step in the consolidation of Bonaparte's power was a new blow to their pretensions, and the amnesty which he tendered of his mercy was gall and bitterness. But facts are stronger than feelings; they returned in throngs, a hundred and twenty-five thousand at the lowest estimate, slowly and painfully securing the erasure of their names from the list of proscription, reveling in their mother tongue and familiar scenes, winning a poor livelihood by their accustomed arts while scheming, fawning even to secure the crumbs which fell from the tables of those in power. The great ladies who had never fled gave them some poor comfort, the Jacobins scoffed and jeered, but the versatile Talleyrand, and above all the plotting Fouché, were open to suggestions.

Within some months their plight began to awaken considerable sympathy, and that sympathy gradually found expression in the theaters and newspapers. The next development was a movement to secure restoration, at least in part, of patrimony and station. Then a mild but symptomatic storm burst on their heads. The sequestered estates, ecclesiastical and secular, were now in new hands, and as order followed anarchy their values to the republicans who had acquired them were steadily increasing. Any attempt to dislodge the possessors would have meant the overthrow of Bonaparte's still insecure power. So he treated the suppliants with contemptuous disdain. What he had done was done. They were home once more and might remain, if subservient: otherwise their existence was their own affair. In the perspective of St. Helena he thought he had erred; that he might have assembled all the considerable estates still in state ownership and have distributed them in bits to former proprietors. Possibly and yet improbably he might have conciliated a large constituency of the social and ecclesiastical hierarchy for use in the empire. In this thought the history of France has measurably justified his regrets. But in fact he put the old stock of the nobility in a place far below the middle and upper burghers who rallied to his support. It was a choice of enemies, and he chose radicals and royalists. They accepted the challenge and met the fate of conspirators.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Pacification of Europe[19]

Russia, Italy, and Spain — The Kingdom of Etruria — The Consulate and Royalty — The Church in France — The Concordat — Affairs in England — France and Russia — The Battle of Copenhagen — Preliminaries of Peace — Terms of the Agreement — France and the United States.

1801

The genius of Bonaparte was all-embracing, because it made one forward step follow close upon another, and that with no appearance of compulsion; for this reason he went so far. The treaty of Lunéville was the first move toward a general pacification. What was to be done with the rest of Italy, with Spain and with Portugal, in order to secure his preponderance in western Europe? To the blandishments of the Consulate, the Czar gave a hearty response. He suggested some sort of demonstration against Great Britain, not alone in the Orient but on her very shores; he advised Prussia to seize Hanover, turned the pretender, Louis XVIII, and his court away from Mittau in midwinter, and dismissed the Bourbon emissary from St. Petersburg. To checkmate Austria he espoused the cause of Piedmont and the Two Sicilies, suggested the Rhine as the French frontier and the restitution of Egypt to Turkey. His Oriental plan was corollary to the armed neutrality he organized to checkmate England. To give respectful heed and retain the good will of Russia, which thus interceded for a monarchical Naples, nothing was said about restoring the Parthenopean Republic. Instead, Ferdinand IV, though compelled to evacuate the Papal States, and to restore the pictures and other booty which in the manner of the time he had removed to his capital, was left in full possession of his crown. English ships were to be forbidden his ports, and the expenses of a French army corps, which should lie, under Soult, at Tarentum, were to be borne by his treasury.

The affairs of Spain had reached a crisis in the low intrigues of her court. Marengo destroyed the influence of the anti-French party at Madrid. Godoy, styled "Prince of the Peace" from his having negotiated the treaty of Basel, had been made prime minister through the influence of Queen Louisa, whom he had infatuated. Though successful in being both the Queen's lover and the King's intimate friend, he was nevertheless an incapable statesman. In 1796 he made Spain still more subservient to France by the first treaty of San Ildefonso; and such was the public resentment that he had to resign. Through Bonaparte's influence he was restored to power, and in a second treaty of San Ildefonso Spain became the servile ally of the Consulate. By the terms of this compact, as already partly expressed in the treaty of Lunéville, not only were Parma and Elba left in the hands of France, but Louisiana was ceded to her, the French colonies in South America were enlarged, and a combined force of French and Spanish troops was organized, which compelled Portugal to abandon the English alliance and accept Bonaparte's terms. The little but important realm was also to shut her harbors to English ships, and pay twenty-five million francs to France. In return, Tuscany was to be erected into a kingdom, with the name of Etruria, for Louis, the heir of Ferdinand of Parma. The latter was a son of Don Philip of Spain, and as his son, the young King, had married the daughter of the ruling sovereigns of Spain, the new royal family was virtually Spanish, their infant boy having only one remote strain of Austrian blood.

When, shortly after, an actor in Paris recited from the stage, in Bonaparte's presence, the line, "J'ai fait des rois, madame, et n'ai pas voulu l'être," the house rocked with applause. The young King was also brought to Paris and paraded as an attendant in the First Consul's antechamber. A few felt the unworthiness of such a game, but the national vanity was tickled. Attendant republics already revolved about the great central French republic; were kingdoms, too, beginning to join the round? It will be seen that, in comparison with the radical anti-royalist policy of the Directory three years before, these arrangements must be considered moderate. To abandon the Roman and Parthenopean republics, and to constitute a new kingdom for a Bourbon, were actions of great significance to the courts of Europe.