Chapter XII (1)

The Restoration of 1814--Norway--Naples--Westphalia--Spain--The Spanish Constitution overthrown: Victory of the Clergy--Restoration in France--The Charta--Encroachments of the Nobles and Clergy--Growing Hostility to the Bourbons--Congress of Vienna--Talleyrand and the Four Powers--The Polish Question--The Saxon Question--Theory of Legitimacy--Secret Alliance against Russia and Prussia--Compromise--The Rhenish Provinces--Napoleon leaves Elba and lands in France--His Declarations--Napoleon at Grenoble, at Lyon, at Paris--The Congress of Vienna unites Europe against France--Murat's Action in Italy--The Acte Additionnel--The Champ de Mai--Napoleon takes up the offensive--Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo--Affairs at Paris--Napoleon sent to St. Helena--Wellington and Fouché--Arguments on the proposed Cession of French Territory--Treaty of Holy Alliance--Second Treaty of Paris--Conclusion of the Work of the Congress of Vienna-- Federation of Germany--Estimate of the Congress of Vienna and of the Treaties of 1815--The Slave Trade.

Of all the events which, in the more recent history of mankind, have struck the minds of nations with awe, and appeared to reveal in its direct operation a power overruling the highest human effort, there is none equal in grandeur and terror to the annihilation of Napoleon's army in the invasion of Russia. It was natural that a generation which had seen State after State overthrown, and each new violation of right followed by an apparent consolidation of the conqueror's strength, should view in the catastrophe of 1812 the hand of Providence visibly outstretched for the deliverance of Europe. [196] Since that time many years have passed. Perils which then seemed to envelop the future of mankind now appear in part illusory; sacrifices then counted cheap have proved of heavy cost. The history of the two last generations shows that not everything was lost to Europe in passing subjection to a usurper, nor everything gained by the victory of his opponents. It is now not easy to suppress the doubt whether the permanent interests of mankind would not have been best served by Napoleon's success in 1812. His empire had already attained dimensions that rendered its ultimate disruption certain: less depended upon the postponement or the acceleration of its downfall than on the order of things ready to take its place. The victory of Napoleon in 1812 would have been followed by the establishment of a Polish kingdom in the provinces taken from Russia. From no generosity in the conqueror, from no sympathy on his part with a fallen people, but from the necessities of his political situation, Poland must have been so organised as to render it the bulwark of French supremacy in the East. The serf would have been emancipated. The just hatred of the peasant to the noble, which made the partition of 1772 easy, and has proved fatal to every Polish uprising from that time to the present, would have been appeased by an agrarian reform executed with Napoleon's own unrivalled energy and intelligence, and ushered in with brighter hopes than have at any time in the history of Poland lit the dark shades of peasant-life. The motives which in 1807 had led Napoleon to stay his hand, and to content himself with half-measures of emancipation in the Duchy of Warsaw [197], could have had no place after 1812, when Russia remained by his side, a mutilated but inexorable enemy, ever on the watch to turn to its own advantage the first murmurs of popular discontent beyond the border. Political independence, the heritage of the Polish noble, might have been withheld, but the blessing of landed independence would have been bestowed on the mass of the Polish people. In the course of some years this restored kingdom, though governed by a member of the house of Bonaparte, would probably have gained sufficient internal strength to survive the downfall of Napoleon's Empire or his own decease. England, Austria, and Turkey would have found it no impossible task to prevent its absorption by Alexander at the re-settlement of Europe, if indeed the collapse of Russia had not been followed by the overthrow of the Porte, and the establishment of a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Roumanian Kingdom under the supremacy of France. By the side of the three absolute monarchs of Central and Eastern Europe there would have remained, upon Napoleon's downfall, at least one people in possession of the tradition of liberty: and from the example of Poland, raised from the deep but not incurable degradation of its social life, the rulers of Russia might have gained courage to emancipate the serf, without waiting for the lapse of another half-century and the occurrence of a second ruinous war. To compare a possible sequence of events with the real course of history, to estimate the good lost and evil got through events which at the time seemed to vindicate the moral governance of the world, is no idle exercise of the imagination. It may serve to give caution to the judgment: it may guard us against an arbitrary and fanciful interpretation of the actual. The generation which witnessed the fall of Napoleon is not the only one which has seen Providence in the fulfilment of its own desire, and in the storm-cloud of nature and history has traced with too sanguine gaze the sacred lineaments of human equity and love.

[Settlement of 1814.]

[Norway.]

[Naples.]

The Empire of Napoleon had indeed passed away. The conquests won by the first soldiers of the Republic were lost to France along with all the latest spoils of its Emperor; but the restoration which was effected in 1814 was no restoration of the political order which had existed on the Continent before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The Powers which had overthrown Napoleon had been partakers, each in its own season, in the system of aggrandisement which had obliterated the old frontiers of Europe. Russia had gained Finland, Bessarabia, and the greater part of Poland; Austria had won Venice, Dalmatia, and Salzburg; Prussia had received between the years 1792 and 1806 an extension of territory in Poland and Northern Germany that more than doubled its area. It was now no part of the policy of the victorious Courts to reinstate the governments which they had themselves dispossessed: the settlement of 1814, in so far as it deserved the name of a restoration, was confined to the territory taken from Napoleon and from princes of his house. Here, though the claims of Republics and Ecclesiastical Princes were forgotten, the titles of the old dynasties were freely recognised. In France itself, in the Spanish Peninsula, in Holland, Westphalia, Piedmont, and Tuscany, the banished houses resumed their sovereignty. It cost the Allies nothing to restore these countries to their hereditary rulers, and it enabled them to describe the work of 1814 in general terms as the restoration of lawful government and national independence. But the claims of legitimacy, as well as of national right, were, as a matter of fact, only remembered where there existed no motive to disregard them; where they conflicted with arrangements of policy, they received small consideration. Norway, which formed part of the Danish monarchy, had been promised by Alexander to Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, in 1812, in return for his support against Napoleon, and the bargain had been ratified by the Allies. As soon as Napoleon was overthrown, Bernadotte claimed his reward. It was in vain that the Norwegians, abandoned by their king, declared themselves independent, and protested against being handed over like a flock of sheep by the liberators of Europe. The Allies held to their contract; a British fleet was sent to assist Bernadotte in overpowering his new subjects, and after a brief resistance the Norwegians found themselves compelled to submit to their fate (April--Aug., 1814). [198] At the other extremity of Europe a second of Napoleon's generals still held his throne among the restored legitimate monarchs. Murat, King of Naples, had forsaken Napoleon in time to make peace and alliance with Austria. Great Britain, though entering into a military convention, had not been a party to this treaty; and it had declared that its own subsequent support of Murat would depend upon the condition that he should honourably exert himself in Italy against Napoleon's forces. This condition Murat had not fulfilled. The British Government was, however, but gradually supplied with proofs of his treachery; nor was Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, inclined to raise new difficulties at Vienna by pressing the claim of Ferdinand of Sicily to his territories on the mainland. [199] Talleyrand, on behalf of the restored Bourbons of Paris, intended to throw all his strength into a diplomatic attack upon Murat before the end of the Congress; but for the present Murat's chances seemed to be superior to those of his rival. Southern Italy thus continued in the hands of a soldier of fortune, who, unlike Bernadotte, was secretly the friend of Napoleon, and ready to support him in any attempt to regain his throne.

[Restoration in Westphalia.]

The engagement of the Allies towards Bernadotte, added to the stipulations of the Peace of Paris, left little to be decided by the Congress of Vienna beyond the fate of Poland, Saxony, and Naples, and the form of political union to be established in Germany. It had been agreed that the Congress should assemble within two months after the signature of the Peace of Paris: this interval, however, proved to be insufficient, and the autumn had set in before the first diplomatists arrived at Vienna, and began the conferences which preceded the formal opening of the Congress. In the meantime a singular spectacle was offered to Europe by the Courts whose restoration was the subject of so much official thanksgiving. Before King Louis XVIII. returned to Paris, the exiled dynasties had regained their thrones in Northern Germany and in Spain. The process of reaction had begun in Hanover and in Hesse as soon as the battle of Leipzig had dissolved the Kingdom of Westphalia and driven Napoleon across the Rhine. Hanover indeed did not enjoy the bodily presence of its Sovereign: its character was oligarchical, and the reaction here was more the affair of the privileged classes than of the Government. In Hesse a prince returned who was the very embodiment of divine right, a prince who had sturdily fought against French demagogues in 1792, and over whose stubborn, despotic nature the revolutions of a whole generation and the loss of his own dominions since the battle of Jena had passed without leaving a trace. The Elector was seventy years old when, at the end of the year 1813, his faithful subjects dragged his carriage in triumph into the streets of Cassel. On the day after his arrival he gave orders that the Hessian soldiery who had been sent on furlough after the battle of Jena should present themselves, every man in the garrison-town where he had stood on the 1st of November, 1806. A few weeks later all the reforms of the last seven years were swept away together. The Code Napoleon ceased to be the law of the land; the old oppressive distinctions of caste, with the special courts for the privileged orders, came again into force, in defiance of the spirit of the age. The feudal burdens of the peasantry were revived, the purchasers of State-lands compelled to relinquish the land without receiving back any of their purchase-money. The decimal coinage was driven out of the country. The old system of taxation, with its iniquitous exemptions, was renewed. All promotions, all grants of rank made by Jerome's Government were annulled: every officer, every public servant resumed the station which he had occupied on the 1st of November, 1806. The very pigtails and powder of the common soldier under the old regime were revived. [200]

[Restoration in Spain.]

The Hessians and their neighbours in North-Western Germany had from of old been treated with very little ceremony by their rulers; and if they welcomed back a family which had been accustomed to hire them out at so much a head to fight against the Hindoos or by the side of the North American Indians, it only proved that they preferred their native taskmasters to Jerome Bonaparte and his French crew of revellers and usurers. The next scene in the European reaction was a far more mournful one. Ferdinand of Spain had no sooner re-crossed the Pyrenees in the spring of 1814, than, convinced of his power by the transports of popular enthusiasm that attended his progress through Northern Spain, he determined to overthrow the Constitution of 1812, and to re-establish the absolute monarchy which had existed before the war. The courtiers and ecclesiastics who gathered round the King dispelled any scruples that he might have felt in lifting his hand against a settlement accepted by the nation. They represented to him that the Cortes of 1812--which, whatever their faults, had been recognised as the legitimate Government of Spain by both England and Russia--consisted of a handful of desperate men, collected from the streets of Cadiz, who had taken upon themselves to insult the Crown, to rob the Church, and to imperil the existence of the Catholic Faith. On the entry of the King into Valencia, the cathedral clergy expressed the wishes of their order in the address of homage which they offered to Ferdinand. "We beg your Majesty," their spokesman concluded, "to take the most vigorous measures for the restoration of the Inquisition, and of the ecclesiastical system that existed in Spain before your Majesty's departure." "These," replied the King, "are my own wishes, and I will not rest until they are fulfilled." [201]

[Spanish Constitution overthrown.]

The victory of the clergy was soon declared. On the 11th of May the King issued a manifesto at Valencia, proclaiming the Constitution of 1812 and every decree of the Cortes null and void, and denouncing the penalties of high treason against everyone who should defend the Constitution by act, word, or writing. A variety of promises, made only to be broken, accompanied this assertion of the rights of the Crown. The King pledged himself to summon new Cortes as soon as public order should be restored, to submit the expenditure to the control of the nation, and to maintain inviolate the security of person and property. It was a significant comment upon Ferdinand's professions of Liberalism that on the very day on which the proclamation was issued the censorship of the Press was restored. But the King had not miscalculated his power over the Spanish people. The same storm of wild, unreasoning loyalty which had followed Ferdinand's reappearance in Spain followed the overthrow of the Constitution. The mass of the Spaniards were ignorant of the very meaning of political liberty: they adored the King as a savage adores his fetish: their passions were at the call of a priesthood as brutish and unscrupulous as that which in 1798 had excited the Lazzaroni of Naples against the Republicans of Southern Italy. No sooner had Ferdinand set the example, by arresting thirty of the most distinguished of the Liberals, than tumults broke out in every part of the country against Constitutionalist magistrates and citizens. Mobs, headed by priests bearing the standard of the Inquisition, destroyed the tablets erected in honour of the Constitution of 1812, and burned Liberal writings in bonfires in the market-places. The prisons were filled with men who, but a short time before, had been the objects of popular adulation.

[The clergy in power.]

Whatever pledges of allegiance had been given to the Constitution of 1812, it was clear that this Constitution had no real hold on the nation, and that Ferdinand fulfilled the wish of the majority of Spaniards in overthrowing it. A wise and energetic sovereign would perhaps have allowed himself to use this outburst of religious fanaticism for the purpose of substituting some better order for the imprudent arrangements of 1812. Ferdinand, an ignorant, hypocritical buffoon, with no more notion of political justice or generosity than the beasts of the field, could only substitute for the fallen Cortes a government by palace-favourites and confessors. It was in vain, that the representatives of Great Britain urged the King to fulfil his constitutional promises, and to liberate the persons who had unjustly been thrown into prison. [202] The clergy were masters of Spain and of the King: their influence daily outweighed even that of Ferdinand's own Ministers, when, under the pressure of financial necessity, the Ministers began to offer some resistance to the exorbitant demands of the priesthood. On the 23rd of May the King signed an edict restoring all monasteries throughout Spain, and reinstating them in their lands. On the 24th of June the clergy were declared exempt from taxation. On the 21st of July the Church won its crowning triumph in the re-establishment of the Inquisition. In the meantime the army was left without pay, in some places actually without food. The country was at the mercy of bands of guerillas, who, since the disappearance of the enemy, had turned into common brigands, and preyed upon their own countrymen. Commerce was extinct; agriculture abandoned; innumerable villages were lying in ruins; the population was barbarised by the savage warfare with which for years past it had avenged its own sufferings upon the invader. Of all the countries of Europe, Spain was the one in which the events of the Revolutionary epoch seemed to have left an effect most nearly approaching to unmixed evil.

[Restoration in France.]

In comparison with the reaction in the Spanish Peninsula the reaction in France was sober and dignified. Louis XVIII. was at least a scholar and a man of the world. In the old days, among companions whose names were now almost forgotten, he had revelled in Voltaire and dallied with the fashionable Liberalism of the time. In his exile he had played the king with some dignity; he was even believed to have learnt some political wisdom by his six years' residence in England. If he had not character, [203] he had at least some tact and some sense of humour; and if not a profound philosopher, he was at least an accomplished epicurean. He hated the zealotry of his brother, the Count of Artois. He was more inclined to quiz the emigrants than to sacrifice anything on their behalf; and the whole bent of his mind made him but an insincere ally of the priesthood, who indeed could hardly expect to enjoy such an orgy in France as their brethren were celebrating in Spain. The King, however, was unable to impart his own indifference to the emigrants who returned with him, nor had he imagination enough to identify himself, as King of France, with the military glories of the nation and with the democratic army that had won them. Louis held high notions of the royal prerogative: this would not in itself have prevented him from being a successful ruler, if he had been capable of governing in the interest of the nation at large. There were few Republicans remaining in France; the centralised institutions of the Empire remained in full vigour; and although the last months of Napoleon's rule had excited among the educated classes a strong spirit of constitutional opposition, an able and patriotic Bourbon accepting his new position, and wielding power for the benefit of the people and not of a class, might perhaps have exercised an authority not much inferior to that possessed by the Crown before 1789. But Louis, though rational, was inexperienced and supine. He was ready enough to admit into his Ministry and to retain in administrative posts throughout the country men who had served under Napoleon; but when the emigrants and the nobles, led by the Count of Artois, pushed themselves to the front of the public service, and treated the restoration of the Bourbons as the victory of their own order, the King offered but a faint resistance, and allowed the narrowest class-interests to discredit a monarchy whose own better traditions identified it not with an aristocracy but with the State.

[The Charta.]

The Constitution promulgated by King Louis XVIII. on the 4th of June, 1814, and known as the Charta, [204] was well received by the French nation. Though far less liberal than the Constitution accepted by Louis XVI. in 1791, it gave to the French a measure of representative government to which they had been strangers under Napoleon. It created two legislative chambers, the Upper House consisting of peers who were nominated by the Crown at its pleasure, whether for life-peerages or hereditary dignity; the Lower House formed by national election, but by election restricted by so high a property-qualification [205] that not one person in two hundred possessed a vote. The Crown reserved to itself the sole power of proposing laws. In spite of this serious limitation of the competence of the two houses, the Lower Chamber possessed, in its right of refusing taxes and of discussing and rejecting all measures laid before it, a reality of power such as no representative body had possessed in France since the beginning of the Consulate. The Napoleonic nobility was placed on an equality with the old noblesse of France, though neither enjoyed, as nobles, anything more than a titular distinction. [206] Purchasers of landed property sold by the State since the beginning of the Revolution were guaranteed in their possessions. The principles of religious freedom, of equality before the law, and of the admissibility of all classes to public employment, which had taken such deep root during the Republic and the Empire, were declared to form part of the public law of France; and by the side of these deeply-cherished rights the Charta of King Louis XVIII. placed, though in a qualified form, the long-forgotten principle of the freedom of the Press.

[Encroachments of Nobles.]

Under such a Constitution there was little room for the old noblesse to arrogate to itself any legal superiority over the mass of the French nation. What was wanting in law might, however, in the opinion of the Count of Artois and his friends, be effected by administration. Of all the institutions of France the most thoroughly national and the most thoroughly democratic was the army; it was accordingly against the army that the noblesse directed its first efforts. Financial difficulties made a large reduction in the forces necessary. Fourteen thousand officers and sergeants were accordingly dismissed on half-pay; but no sooner had this measure of economy been effected than a multitude of emigrants who had served against the Republic in the army of the Prince of Condé or in La Vendée were rewarded with all degrees of military rank. Naval officers who had quitted the service of France and entered that of its enemies were reinstated with the rank which they had held in foreign navies. [207] The tricolor, under which every battle of France had been fought from Jemappes to Montmartre, was superseded by the white flag of the House of Bourbon, under which no living soldier had marched to victory. General Dupont, known only by his capitulation at Baylen in 1808, was appointed Minister of War. The Imperial Guard was removed from service at the Palace, and the so-called Military Household of the old Bourbon monarchy revived, with the privileges and the insignia belonging to the period before 1775. Young nobles who had never seen a shot fired crowded into this favoured corps, where the musketeer and the trooper held the rank and the pay of a lieutenant in the army. While in every village of France some battered soldier of Napoleon cursed the Government that had driven him from his comrades, the Court revived at Paris all the details of military ceremonial that could be gathered from old almanacks, from the records of court-tailors, and from the memories of decayed gallants. As if to convince the public that nothing had happened during the last twenty-two years, the aged Marquis de Chansenets, who had been Governor of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, and had then escaped by hiding among the bodies of the dead, [208] resumed his place at the head of the officers of the Palace.

[Encroachments of the clergy.]

[Growing hostility to the Bourbons.]

These were but petty triumphs for the emigrants and nobles, but they were sufficient to make the restored monarchy unpopular. Equally injurious was their behaviour in insulting the families of Napoleon's generals, in persecuting men who had taken part in the great movement of 1789, and in intimidating the peasant-owners of land that had been confiscated and sold by the State. Nor were the priesthood backward in discrediting the Government of Louis XVIII. in the service of their own order. It might be vain to think of recovering the Church-lands, or of introducing the Inquisition into France, but the Court might at least be brought to invest itself with the odour of sanctity, and the parish-priest might be made as formidable a person within his own village as the mayor or the agent of the police-minister. Louis XVIII. was himself sceptical and self-indulgent. This, however, did not prevent him from publishing a letter to the Bishops placing his kingdom under the especial protection of the Virgin Mary, and from escorting the image of the patron-saint through the streets of Paris in a procession in which Marshal Soult and other regenerate Jacobins of the Court braved the ridicule of the populace by acting as candle-bearers. Another sign of the King's submission to the clergy was the publication of an edict which forbade buying and selling on Sundays and festivals.

Whatever the benefits of a freely-observed day of rest, this enactment, which was not submitted to the Chambers, passed for an arrogant piece of interference on the part of the clergy with national habits; and while it caused no inconvenience to the rich, it inflicted substantial loss upon a numerous and voluble class of petty traders. The wrongs done to the French nation by the priests and emigrants who rose to power in 1814 were indeed the merest trifle in comparison with the wrongs which it had uncomplainingly borne at the hands of Napoleon. But the glory of the Empire, the strength and genius of its absolute rule, were gone. In its place there was a family which had been dissociated from France during twenty years, which had returned only to ally itself with an unpopular and dreaded caste, and to prove that even the unexpected warmth with which it had been welcomed home could not prevent it from becoming, at the end of a few months, utterly alien and uninteresting. The indifference of the nation would not have endangered the Bourbon monarchy if the army had been won over by the King. But here the Court had excited the bitterest enmity. The accord which for a moment had seemed possible even to Republicans of the type of Carnot had vanished at a touch. [209] Rumours of military conspiracies grew stronger with every month. Wellington, now British Ambassador at Paris, warned his Government of the changed feeling of the capital, of the gatherings of disbanded officers, of possible attacks upon the Tuileries. "The truth is," he wrote, "that the King of France without the army is no King." Wellington saw the more immediate danger: [210] he failed to see the depth and universality of the movement passing over France, which before the end of the year 1814 had destroyed the hold of the Bourbon monarchy except in those provinces where it had always found support, and prepared the nation at large to welcome back the ruler who so lately seemed to have fallen for ever.

[Congress of Vienna, Sept., 1814.]

Paris and Madrid divided for some months after the conclusion of peace the attention of the political world. At the end of September the centre of European interest passed to Vienna. The great council of the Powers, so long delayed, was at length assembled. The Czar of Russia, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and nearly all the statesmen of eminence in Europe, gathered round the Emperor Francis and his Minister, Metternich, to whom by common consent the presidency of the Congress was offered. Lord Castlereagh represented England, and Talleyrand France. Rasumoffsky and other Russian diplomatists acted under the immediate directions of their master, who on some occasions even entered into personal correspondence with the Ministers of the other Powers. Hardenberg stood in a somewhat freer relation to King Frederick William; Stein was present, but without official place. The subordinate envoys and attaches of the greater Courts, added to a host of petty princes and the representatives who came from the minor Powers, or from communities which had ceased to possess any political existence at all, crowded Vienna. In order to relieve the antagonisms which had already come too clearly into view, Metternich determined to entertain his visitors in the most magnificent fashion; and although the Austrian State was bankrupt, and in some districts the people were severely suffering, a sum of about £10,000 a day was for some time devoted to this purpose. The splendour and the gaieties of Metternich were emulated by his guests; and the guardians of Europe enjoyed or endured for months together a succession of fêtes, banquets, dances, and excursions, varied, through the zeal of Talleyrand to ingratiate himself with his new master, by a Mass of great solemnity on the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. [211] One incident lights the faded and insipid record of vanished pageants and defunct gallantries. Beethoven was in Vienna. The Government placed the great Assembly-rooms at his disposal, and enabled the composer to gratify a harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life whose poverty has enriched mankind with such immortal gifts.

[Talleyrand and the four Powers.]

The Congress had need of its distractions, for the difficulties which faced it were so great that, even after the arrival of the Sovereigns, it was found necessary to postpone the opening of the regular sittings until November. By the secret articles of the Peace of Paris, the Allies had reserved to themselves the disposal of all vacant territory, although their conclusions required to be formally sanctioned by the Congress at large. The Ministers of Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia accordingly determined at the outset to decide upon all territorial questions among themselves, and only after their decisions were completely formed to submit them to France and the other Powers. [212] Talleyrand, on hearing of this arrangement, protested that France itself was now one of the Allies, and demanded that the whole body of European States should at once meet in open Congress. The four Courts held to their determination, and began their preliminary sittings without Talleyrand. But the French statesman had, under the form of a paradox, really stated the true political situation. The greater Powers were so deeply divided in their aims that their old bond of common interest, the interest of union against France, was now less powerful than the impulse that made them seek the support of France against one another. Two men had come to the Congress with a definite aim: Alexander had resolved to gain the Duchy of Warsaw, and to form it, with or without some part of Russian Poland, into a Polish kingdom, attached to his own crown: Talleyrand had determined, either on the question of Poland, or on the question of Saxony, which arose out of it, to break allied Europe into halves, and to range France by the side of two of the great Powers against the two others. The course of events favoured for a while the design of the Minister: Talleyrand himself prosecuted his plan with an ability which, but for the untimely return of Napoleon from Elba, would have left France, without a war, the arbiter and the leading Power of Europe.

[Polish question.]

Since the Russian victories of 1812, the Emperor Alexander had made no secret of his intention to restore a Polish Kingdom and a Polish nationality. [213] Like many other designs of this prince, the project combined a keen desire for personal glorification with a real generosity of feeling. Alexander was thoroughly sincere in his wish not only to make the Poles again a people, but to give them a Parliament and a free Constitution. The King of Poland, however, was to be no independent prince, but Alexander himself: although the Duchy of Warsaw, the chief if not the sole component of the proposed new kingdom, had belonged to Austria and Prussia after the last partition of Poland, and extended into the heart of the Prussian monarchy. Alexander insisted on his anxiety to atone for the crime of Catherine in dismembering Poland: the atonement, however, was to be made at the sole cost of those whom Catherine had allowed to share the booty. Among the other Governments, the Ministry of Great Britain would gladly have seen a Polish State established in a really independent form; [214] failing this, it desired that the Duchy of Warsaw should be divided, as formerly, between Austria and Prussia. Metternich was anxious that the fortress of Cracow, at any rate, should not fall into the hands of the Czar. Stein and Hardenberg, and even Alexander's own Russian counsellors, earnestly opposed the Czar's project, not only on account of the claims of Prussia on Warsaw, but from dread of the agitation likely to be produced by a Polish Parliament among all Poles outside the new State. King Frederick William, however, was unaccustomed to dispute the wishes of his ally; and the Czar's offer of Saxony in substitution for Warsaw gave to the Prussian Ministers, who were more in earnest than their master, at least the prospect of receiving a valuable equivalent for what they might surrender.

[Saxon question.]

By the Treaty of Kalisch, made when Prussia united its arms with those of Russia against Napoleon (Feb. 27th, 1813), the Czar had undertaken to restore the Prussian monarchy to an extent equal to that which it had possessed in 1805. It was known before the opening of the Congress that the Czar proposed to do this by handing over to King Frederick William the whole of Saxony, whose Sovereign, unlike his colleagues in the Rhenish Confederacy, had supported Napoleon up to his final overthrow at Leipzig. Since that time the King of Saxony had been held a prisoner, and his dominions had been occupied by the Allies. The Saxon question had thus already gained the attention of all the European Governments, and each of the Ministers now at Vienna brought with him some more or less distinct view upon the subject. Castlereagh, who was instructed to foster the union of Prussia and Austria against Alexander's threatening ambition, was willing that Prussia should annex Saxony if in return it would assist him in keeping Russia out of Warsaw: [215] Metternich disliked the annexation, but offered no serious objection, provided that in Western Germany Prussia would keep to the north of the Main: Talleyrand alone made the defence of the King of Saxony the very centre of his policy, and subordinated all other aims to this. His instructions, like those of Castlereagh, gave priority to the Polish question; [216] but Talleyrand saw that Saxony, not Poland, was the lever by which he could throw half of Europe on to the side of France; and before the four Allied Courts had come to any single conclusion, the French statesman had succeeded, on what at first passed for a subordinate point, in breaking up their concert.

[Talleyrand's action on Saxony.]

For a while the Ministers of Austria, Prussia, and England appeared to be acting in harmony; and throughout the month of October all three endeavoured to shake the purpose of Alexander regarding Warsaw. [217] Talleyrand, however, foresaw that the efforts of Prussia in this direction would not last very long, and he wrote to Louis XVIII. asking for his permission to make a definite offer of armed assistance to Austria in case of need. Events took the turn which Talleyrand expected. Early in November the King of Prussia completely yielded to Alexander, and ordered Hardenberg to withdraw his opposition to the Russian project. Metternich thus found himself abandoned on the Polish question by Prussia; and at the same moment the answer of King Louis XVIII. arrived, and enabled Talleyrand to assure the Austrian Minister that, if resistance to Russia and Prussia should become necessary, he might count on the support of a French army. Metternich now completely changed his position on the Saxon question, and wrote to Hardenberg (Dec. 10) stating that, inasmuch as Prussia had chosen to sacrifice Warsaw, the Emperor Francis absolutely forbade the annexation of more than a fifth part of the kingdom of Saxony. Castlereagh, disgusted with the obstinacy of Russia and the subserviency of King Frederick William, forgave Talleyrand for not supporting him earlier, and cordially entered into this new plan for thwarting the Northern Powers. The leading member of the late Rhenish Confederacy, the King of Bavaria, threw himself with eagerness into the struggle against Prussia and against German unity. In proportion as Stein and the patriots of 1813 urged the claims of German nationality under Prussian leadership against the forfeited rights of a Court which had always served on Napoleon's side, the politicians of the Rhenish Confederacy declaimed against the ambition and the Jacobinism of Prussia, and called upon Europe to defend the united principles of hereditary right and of national independence in the person of the King of Saxony.

[Theory of Legitimacy.]

Talleyrand's object was attained. He had isolated Russia and Prussia, and had drawn to his own side not only England and Austria but the whole body of the minor German States. Nothing was wanting but a phrase, or an idea, which should consecrate the new league in the opinion of Europe as a league of principle, and bind the Allies, in matters still remaining open, to the support of the interests of the House of Bourbon. Talleyrand had made his theory ready. In notes to Castlereagh and Metternich, [218] he declared that the whole drama of the last twenty years had been one great struggle between revolution and established right, a struggle at first between Republicanism and Monarchy, afterwards between usurping dynasties and legitimate dynasties. The overthrow of Napoleon had been the victory of the principle of legitimacy; the task of England and Austria was now to extend the work of restitution to all Europe, and to defend the principle against new threatened aggressions. In the note to Castlereagh, Talleyrand added a practical corollary. "To finish the revolution, the principle of legitimacy must triumph without exception. The kingdom of Saxony must be preserved; the kingdom of Naples must return to its legitimate king."

[Alliance against Russia and Prussia, Jan. 3, 1815.]

As an historical summary of the Napoleonic wars, Talleyrand's doctrine was baseless. No one but Pitt had cared about the fate of the Bourbons; no one would have hesitated to make peace with Napoleon, if Napoleon would have accepted terms of peace. The manifesto was not, however, intended to meet a scientific criticism. In the English Foreign Office it was correctly described as a piece of drollery; and Metternich was too familiar with the language of principles himself to attach much meaning to it in the mouth of anyone else. Talleyrand, however, kept a grave countenance. With inimitable composure the old Minister of the Directory wrote to Louis XVIII. lamenting that Castlereagh did not appear to care much about the principle of legitimacy, and in fact did not quite comprehend it; [219] and he added his fear that this moral dimness on the part of the English Minister arose from the dealing of his countrymen with Tippoo Sahib. But for Europe at large,--for the English Liberal party, who looked upon the Saxons and the Prussians as two distinct nations, and for the Tories, who forgot that Napoleon had made the Elector of Saxony a king; for the Emperor of Austria, who had no wish to see the Prussian frontier brought nearer to Prague; above all, for the minor German courts who dreaded every approach towards German unity,--Talleyrand's watchword was the best that could have been invented. His counsel prospered. On the 3rd of January, 1815, after a rash threat of war uttered by Hardenberg, a secret treaty [220] was signed by the representatives of France, England, and Austria, pledging these Powers to take the field, if necessary, against Russia and Prussia in defence of the principles of the Peace of Paris. The plan of the campaign was drawn up, the number of the forces fixed. Bavaria had already armed; Piedmont, Hanover, and even the Ottoman Porte, were named as future members of the alliance.

[Compromise on Polish and Saxon questions.]

[Prussia gains Rhenish Provinces.]

It would perhaps be unfair to the French Minister to believe that he actually desired to kindle a war on this gigantic scale. Talleyrand had not, like Napoleon, a love for war for its own sake. His object was rather to raise France from its position as a conquered and isolated Power; to surround it with allies; to make the House of Bourbon the representatives of a policy interesting to a great part of Europe; and, having thus undone the worst results of Napoleon's rule, to trust to some future complication for the recovery of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine. Nor was Talleyrand's German policy adopted solely as the instrument of a passing intrigue. He appears to have had a true sense of the capacity of Prussia to transform Germany into a great military nation; and the policy of alliance with Austria and protection of the minor States which he pursued in 1814 was that which he had advocated throughout his career. The conclusion of the secret treaty of January 3rd marked the definite success of his plans. France was forthwith admitted into the council hitherto known as that of the Four Courts, and from this time its influence visibly affected the action of Russia and Prussia, reports of the secret treaty having reached the Czar immediately after its signature. [221] The spirit of compromise now began to animate the Congress. Alexander had already won a virtual decision in his favour on the Polish question, but he abated something of his claims, and while gaining the lion's share of the Duchy of Warsaw, he ultimately consented that Cracow, which threatened the Austrian frontier, should be formed into an independent Republic, and that Prussia should receive the fortresses of Dantzic and Thorn on the Vistula, with the district lying between Thorn and the border of Silesia. [222] This was little for Alexander to abandon; on the Saxon question the allies of Talleyrand gained most that they demanded. The King of Saxony was restored to his throne, and permitted to retain Dresden and about half of his dominions. Prussia received the remainder. In lieu of a further expansion in Saxony, Prussia was awarded territory on the left bank of the Rhine, which, with its recovered Westphalian provinces, restored the monarchy to an area and population equal to that which it had possessed in 1805. But the dominion given to Prussia beyond the Rhine, though considered at the time to be a poor equivalent for the second half of Saxony, was in reality a gift of far greater value. It made Prussia, in defence of its own soil, the guardian and bulwark of Germany against France. It brought an element into the life of the State in striking contrast with the aristocratic and Protestant type predominant in the older Prussian provinces,--a Catholic population, liberal in its political opinions, and habituated by twenty years' union with France to the democratic tendencies of French social life. It gave to Prussia something more in common with Bavaria and the South, and qualified it, as it had not been qualified before, for its future task of uniting Germany under its own leadership.

[Napoleon leaves Elba, Feb. 26.]

[Lands in France, March 1.]

The Polish and Saxon difficulties, which had threatened the peace of Europe, were virtually settled before the end of the month of January. Early in February Lord Castlereagh left Vienna, to give an account of his labours and to justify his policy before the English House of Commons. His place at the Congress was taken by the Duke of Wellington. There remained the question of Naples, the formation of a Federal Constitution for Germany, and several matters of minor political importance, none of which endangered the good understanding of the Powers. Suddenly the action of the Congress was interrupted by the most startling intelligence. On the night of March 6th Metternich was roused from sleep to receive a despatch informing him that Napoleon had quitted Elba. The news had taken eight days to reach Vienna. Napoleon had set sail on the 26th of February. In the silence of his exile he had watched the progress of events in France: he had convinced himself of the strength of the popular reaction against the priests and emigrants; and the latest intelligence which he had received from Vienna led him to believe that the Congress itself was on the point of breaking up. There was at least some chance of success in an attempt to regain his throne; and, the decision once formed, Napoleon executed it with characteristic audacity and despatch. Talleyrand, on hearing that Napoleon had left Elba, declared that he would only cross into Italy and there raise the standard of Italian independence: instead of doing this, Napoleon made straight for France, with the whole of his guard, eleven hundred in number, embarked on a little flotilla of seven ships. The voyage lasted three days: no French or English vessels capable of offering resistance met the squadron. On the 1st of March Napoleon landed at the bay of Jouan, three miles to the west of Antibes. A detachment of his guards called upon the commandant of Antibes to deliver up the town to the Emperor; the commandant refused, and the troops bivouacked that evening, with Napoleon among them, in the olive-woods by the shore of the Mediterranean.

[Moves on Grenoble.]

[Troops at La Mure.]

Before daybreak began the march that was to end in Paris. Instead of following the coast road of Provence, which would have brought him to Toulon and Marseilles, where most of the population were fiercely Royalist, [223] and where Massena and other great officers might have offered resistance, Napoleon struck northwards into the mountains, intending to descend upon Lyons by way of Grenoble. There were few troops in this district, and no generals capable of influencing them. The peasantry of Dauphiné were in great part holders of land that had been taken from the Church and the nobles: they were exasperated against the Bourbons, and, like the peasantry of France generally, they identified the glory of the country which they loved with the name and the person of Napoleon. As the little band penetrated into the mountains the villagers thronged around them, and by offering their carts and horses enabled Napoleon to march continuously over steep and snowy roads at the rate of forty miles a day. No troops appeared to dispute these mountain passages: it was not until the close of the fifth day's march that Napoleon's mounted guard, pressing on in front of the marching column, encountered, in the village of La Mure, twenty miles south of Grenoble, a regiment of infantry wearing the white cockade of the House of Bourbon. The two bodies of troops mingled and conversed in the street: the officer commanding the royal infantry fearing the effect on his men, led them back on the road towards Grenoble. Napoleon's lancers also retired, and the night passed without further communication. At noon on the following day the lancers, again advancing towards Grenoble, found the infantry drawn up to defend the road. They called out that Napoleon was at hand, and begged the infantry not to fire. Presently Napoleon's column came in sight; one of his _aides-de-camp_ rode to the front of the royal troops, addressed them, and pointed out Napoleon. The regiment was already wavering, the officer commanding had already given the order of retreat, when the men saw their Emperor advancing towards them. They saw his face, they heard his voice: in another moment the ranks were broken, and the soldiers were pressing with shouts and tears round the leader whom nature had created with such transcendent capacity for evil, and endowed with such surpassing power of attracting love.

[Enters Grenoble, March 7.]

[Declaration of his purpose.]

Everything was decided by this first encounter. "In six days," said Napoleon, "we shall be in the Tuileries." The next pledge of victory came swiftly. Colonel Labédoyère, commander of the 7th Regiment of the Line, had openly declared for Napoleon in Grenoble, and appeared on the road at the head of his men a few hours after the meeting at La Mure. Napoleon reached Grenoble the same evening. The town had been in tumult all day. The Préfet fled: the general in command sent part of his troops away, and closed the gates. On Napoleon's approach the population thronged the ramparts with torches; the gates were burst open; Napoleon was borne through the town in triumph by a wild and intermingled crowd of soldiers and workpeople. The whole mass of the poorer classes of the town welcomed him with enthusiasm: the middle classes, though hostile to the Church and the Bourbons, saw too clearly the dangers to France involved in Napoleon's return to feel the same joy. [224] They remained in the background, neither welcoming Napoleon nor interfering with the welcome offered him by others. Thus the night passed. On the morning of the next day Napoleon received the magistrates and principal inhabitants of the town, and addressed them in terms which formed the substance of every subsequent declaration of his policy. "He had come," he said, "to save France from the outrages of the returning nobles; to secure to the peasant the possession of his land; to uphold the rights won in 1789 against a minority which sought to re-establish the privileges of caste and the feudal burdens of the last century. France had made trial of the Bourbons: it had done well to do so; but the experiment had failed. The Bourbon monarchy had proved incapable of detaching itself from its worst supports, the priests and nobles: only the dynasty which owed its throne to the Revolution could maintain the social work of the Revolution. As for himself, he had learnt wisdom by misfortune. He renounced conquest. He should give France peace without and liberty within. He accepted the Treaty of Paris and the frontiers of 1792. Freed from the necessities which had forced him in earlier days to found a military Empire, he recognised and bowed to the desire of the French nation for constitutional government. He should henceforth govern only as a constitutional sovereign, and seek only to leave a constitutional crown to his son."

[Feeling of the various classes.]

[Napoleon enters Lyons, March 10.]

This language was excellently chosen. It satisfied the peasants and the workmen, who wished to see the nobles crushed, and it showed at least a comprehension of the feelings uppermost in the minds of the wealthier and more educated middle classes, the longing for peace, and the aspiration towards political liberty. It was also calculated to temper the unwelcome impression that an exiled ruler was being forced upon France by the soldiery. The military movement was indeed overwhelmingly decisive, yet the popular movement was scarcely less so. The Royalists were furious, but impotent to act; thoughtful men in all classes held back, with sad apprehensions of returning war and calamity; [225] but from the time when Napoleon left Grenoble, the nation at large was on his side. There was nowhere an effective centre of resistance. The Préfets and other civil officers appointed under the Empire still for the most part held their posts; they knew themselves to be threatened by the Bourbonist reaction, but they had not yet been displaced; their professions of loyalty to Louis XVIII. were forced, their instincts of obedience to their old master, even if they wished to have done with him, profound. From this class, whose cowardice and servility find too many parallels in history, [226] Napoleon had little to fear. Among the marshals and higher officers charged with the defence of the monarchy, those who sincerely desired to serve the Bourbons found themselves powerless in the midst of their troops. Macdonald, who commanded at Lyons, had to fly from his men, in order to escape being made a prisoner. The Count of Artois, who had come to join him, discovered that the only service he could render to the cause of his family was to take himself out of sight. Napoleon entered Lyons on the 10th of March, and now formally resumed his rank and functions as Emperor. His first edicts renewed that appeal to the ideas and passions of the Revolution which had been the key-note of every one of his public utterances since leaving Elba. Treating the episode of Bourbon restoration as null and void, the edicts of Lyons expelled from France every emigrant who had returned without the permission of the Republic or the Emperor; they drove from the army the whole mass of officers intruded by the Government of Louis XVIII.; they invalidated every appointment and every dismissal made in the magistracy since the 1st of April, 1814; and, reverting to the law of the Constituent Assembly of 1789, abolished all nobility except that which had been conferred by the Emperor himself.

[Marshal Ney.]

[The Chambers in Paris.]

[Napoleon enters Paris, March 20.]