Chapter V: Part THE THIRD

1814-1830

BOOKS I AND II

The last days of the Empire

Youth is a charming thing: it sets out at life's commencement crowned with flowers, as did the Athenian fleet going to conquer Sicily and the delightful plains of Enna. The prayer is offered aloud by the priest of Neptune, libations are made from goblets of gold, the crowd lining the coast unites its invocations to those of the pilot, the pæan is sung while the sail is unfurled to the rays and to the breath of dawn. Alcibiades[86], arrayed in purple and beautiful as Love, is noticeable on the triremes, proud of the seven chariots which he has launched on the Olympian race-course. But, scarce is the isle of Alcinous[87] passed, when the illusion vanishes: Alcibiades, banished, goes to grow old far away from his country and to die pierced with arrows on Timandra's bosom. The companions of his early hopes, enslaved at Syracuse, have nothing to alleviate the weight of their chains but a few verses of Euripides.

You have seen my youth quitting the shore: it had not the beauty of the pupil of Pericles[88], educated upon the knees of Aspasia[89] but it had the same morning hours--and longings and dreams, God knows! I have described those dreams to you: to-day, returning to land after many an exile, I have nothing more to tell you but truths sad as my age. If at times I still sound the chords of the lyre, these are the last harmonies of the poet seeking to cure himself of the wounds caused by the arrows of time, or to console himself for the slavery of years.

You know how changeable was my life during my condition as a traveller and a soldier; you know of my literary existence from 1800 to 1813, the year in which you left me at the Vallée-aux-Loups, which still belonged to me when my political career opened. We are about to enter into that career: before penetrating into it, I must needs revert to the general facts which I have overlooked while occupying myself solely with my works and my personal adventures. Those facts are of Napoleon's making. Let us therefore pass to him; let us speak of the huge edifice which was being built outside my dreams. I now turn historian without ceasing to be an autobiographer; a public interest is about to support my private confidences; my own smaller recitals will group themselves around my narrative.

When the war of the Revolution broke out, the kings did not understand it; they saw a revolt where they ought to have seen the changing of the nations, the end and the commencement of a world: they flattered themselves that for them there was a question only of enlarging their States with a few provinces taken from France; they believed in bygone military tactics, in bygone diplomatic treaties, in cabinet negociations: and conscripts were about to set Frederic's grenadiers to flight; monarchs were about to come to sue for peace in the ante-rooms of a few obscure demagogues; and awful revolutionary opinion was about to unravel the intrigues of old Europe upon the scaffolds. That old Europe thought it was fighting only France; it did not perceive that a new age was marching upon it.

Bonaparte, in the course of his ever-increasing successes, seemed called upon to change the royal dynasties, to make his own the oldest of them all. He had made Kings of the Electors of Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Saxony; he had given the crown of Naples to Murat, that of Spain to Joseph, that of Holland to Louis, that of Westphalia to Jerome; his sister, Élisa Bacciochi, was Princess of Lucca; he, on his own account, was Emperor of the French, King of Italy, in which kingdom were included Venice, Tuscany, Parma and Piacenza; Piedmont was united to France; he had consented to allow one of his captains, Bernadotte[90], to reign in Sweden; by the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine he exercised the rights of the House of Austria over Germany; he had declared himself the mediator of the Helvetian Confederation; he had laid Prussia low; without possessing a bark, he had declared the British Isles in a state of blockade. England, in spite of her fleets, was on the point of not having a port in Europe in which to discharge a bale of merchandise or post a letter.

[Sidenote: Napoleon's position in 1813.]

The Papal States formed part of the French Empire; the Tiber was a French department. In the streets of Paris, one saw cardinals, half-prisoners, who, putting their heads through the window of their cab, asked:

"Is this where the King of ---- lives?"

"No," replied the porter to whom the question was put, "it's higher up."

Austria had redeemed herself only by handing over her daughter: the "raider" of the South[91] demanded Honoria[92] from Valentinian[93], with half of the provinces of the Empire.

How had those miracles been worked? What qualities were possessed by the man who gave birth to them? What qualities did he lack for their achievement? I will trace the immense fortune of Bonaparte, who, notwithstanding, passed so quickly that his days fill but a short period of the time covered by these Memoirs. Fastidious productions of genealogies, cold disquisitions upon facts, insipid verifications of dates are the burdens and servitudes of the writer.[94]

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In the Second Book of these Memoirs you have read (I had then returned from my first exile to Dieppe):

"I have been permitted to return to my valley. The soil trembles beneath the steps of the foreign soldier: I am writing, like the last of the Romans, to the sound of the Barbarian invasion. By day I compose pages as agitated as the events of the day; at night, while the rolling of the distant cannon dies away in my solitary woods, I return to the silence of the years that sleep in the grave and to the peace of my youngest memories."

*

Those agitated pages which I composed by day were notes relating to the events of the moment which, when collected, formed my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._ I had so high an opinion of the genius of Napoleon and the gallantry of our soldiers that an invasion by the foreigner which should be successful in its ultimate result could not enter into my head; but I thought that this invasion, by making France realize the danger to which Napoleon's ambition had brought her, would lead to a movement from within and that the enfranchisement of the French would be worked by their own hands. It was with this idea that I was writing my notes, so that, if our political assemblies should stay the march of the Allies and resolve to sever from a great man who had become a scourge, they should know to whom to resort; the shelter seemed to me to lie in the authority, modified in accordance with the times, under which our ancestors had lived during eight centuries: when, in a storm, one finds nothing within reach but an old edifice, all in ruins though it be, one retires to it.

In the winter of 1813 to 1814, I took an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the first gate of the garden of the Tuileries, before which I had heard the death of the Duc d'Enghien cried. As yet there was nothing to be seen in that street except the arcades built by the Government and a few houses rising here and there with their lateral denticulation of projecting stones.

It needed nothing less than the spectacle of the calamities weighing on France to maintain the aversion which Napoleon inspired and at the same time to protect one's self against the admiration which he caused to revive so soon as he acted: he was the proudest genius of action that ever existed; his first campaign in Italy and his last campaign in France (I am not speaking of Waterloo) are his two finest campaigns: he was Condé in the first, Turenne in the second, a great warrior in the former, a great man in the latter; but they differed in their results: by the one he gained the Empire, by the other he lost it. His last hours of power, all uprooted, all barefoot as they were, could not be drawn from him, like a lion's tooth, save by the efforts of the arms of Europe. The name of Napoleon was still so formidable that the hostile armies crossed the Rhine in terror; they unceasingly looked behind them, in order well to assure themselves that their retreat would be possible; masters of Paris, they trembled yet. Alexander[95], casting his eyes towards Russia while entering France, congratulated the persons who were able to go away, and wrote his anxieties and regrets to his mother[96].

[Sidenote: His campaign in France.]

Napoleon beat the Russians at Saint-Dizier[97], the Prussians and Russians at Brienne[98], as though to do honour to the fields in which he had been brought up. He routed the Army of Silesia at Montmirail[99] and Champaubert[100] and a portion of the main army at Montereau[101]. He made head everywhere; went and returned on his steps; repelled the columns by which he was surrounded. The Allies proposed an armistice; Bonaparte tore up the proffered preliminaries and exclaimed:

"I am nearer to Vienna than the Emperor of Austria is to Paris!"

Russia, Austria, Prussia and England, for their mutual consolation, concluded a new treaty of alliance at Chaumont[102]; but in reality they were alarmed at Bonaparte's resistance and were thinking of retreat. At Lyons an army[103] was forming on the Austrian flank; Marshal Soult was checking the English; the Congress of Châtillon[104], which was not dissolved until the 18th of March, was still negociating. Bonaparte drove Blücher[105] from the heights of Craonne[106]. The main allied army had triumphed on the 26th of February, at Bar-sur-Aube, thanks only to superiority in numbers. Bonaparte, multiplying himself, had recovered Troyes[107], which the Allies reoccupied[108]. From Craonne he had moved upon Rheims[109].

"To-night," he said, "I shall go to take my father-in-law at Troyes."

On the 20th of March, an affair took place near Arcis-sur-Aube[110]. Amid a rolling fire of artillery, a shell having fallen in front of a square of the guards, the square appeared to make a slight movement: Bonaparte dashed towards the projectile, the fuse of which was smoking, and made his horse sniff at it; the shell burst, and the Emperor came safe and sound from the midst of the shattered bolt.

The battle was to recommence the following day, but Bonaparte, yielding to the inspiration of genius, an inspiration which was none the less fatal, retired in order to bear upon the rear of the confederate troops, separate them from their stores, and swell his own army with the garrisons of the frontier places. The foreigners were preparing to fall back upon the Rhine, when Alexander, by one of these Heaven-inspired impulses which change a whole world, took the resolve to march upon Paris, the road to which was becoming free[111]. Napoleon thought he would draw the mass of the enemy after him, and he was followed, by only ten thousand men of the cavalry, whom he believed to be the advance-guard of the main troops, whereas they masked the real movement of the Prussians and Muscovites. He dispersed those ten thousand horse at Saint-Dizier and Vitry, and then perceived that the great allied army was not behind them: that army, which was flinging itself upon the capital, had before it only Marshals Marmont[112] and Mortier[113], with about twelve thousand conscripts.

[Sidenote: He retires to Fontainebleau.]

Napoleon hurriedly made for Fontainebleau[114]: there a sainted victim[115], retiring, had left the requiter and the avenger. Two things in history always go side by side: let a man enter upon a path of injustice, and he at the same time opens for himself a path of perdition in which, at a given distance, the first road will converge into the second.

*

Men's minds were greatly agitated: the hope of at all costs seeing brought to a close a cruel war which, since twenty years, had been weighing down upon France sated with misfortune and glory, this hope carried the day, among the masses, over the feeling of nationality. Each one thought of the part he would have to take in the approaching catastrophe. Every evening my friends came to talk at Madame de Chateaubriand's, to tell and comment upon the events of the day. Messieurs de Fontanes, de Clausel, Joubert gathered with the crowd of those transient friends whom events bring and events withdraw. Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, beautiful, peaceable and devoted, whom we shall meet again at Ghent, kept Madame de Chateaubriand faithful company. Madame la Duchesse de Duras was also in Paris, and I often went to see Madame la Marquise de Montcalm[116], sister to the Duc de Richelieu[117].

I continued to be persuaded, despite the near approach of the battle-fields, that the Allies would not enter Paris and that a national insurrection would put an end to our fears. The obsession of this idea prevented me from feeling the presence of the foreign armies as keenly as I might have done: but I could not keep myself from reflecting upon the calamities to which we had subjected Europe, when I saw Europe bring them back to us.

I never ceased working at my pamphlet; I was preparing it as a remedy when the moment of anarchy should come to burst forth. It is not thus that we write nowadays, when we live at our ease, with only a war of broadsheets to fear: at night, I turned the key in my lock; I placed my papers under my pillow, with two loaded revolvers on my table: I slept between these two muses. My text was in duplicate: I had written it in the form of a pamphlet, which it retained, and in the shape of a speech, differing in some respects from the pamphlet; I thought that, when France rose, they might assemble at the Hôtel de Ville, and I had prepared myself on two topics.

Madame de Chateaubriand wrote a few notes at various periods of our common life; among those notes I find the following paragraph:

"M. de Chateaubriand was writing his pamphlet _De Bonaparte
et des Bourbons._ If that pamphlet had been seized, the
result was not doubtful: the sentence was the scaffold.
Nevertheless the author displayed incredible negligence in
concealing it. Often he would go out and leave it on the
table; his prudence never went beyond placing it under his
pillow, which he used to do before his valet, a very honest
fellow, but liable to temptation. As for me, I was in a
mortal fright: and, so soon as M. de Chateaubriand had gone
out, I used to take the manuscript and place it about my
person. One day, while crossing the Tuileries, I noticed that
I no longer had it, and, being sure that I had felt it on
leaving the house, I had no doubt that I had lost it on the
way. Already I saw the fatal work in the hands of the police
and M. de Chateaubriand arrested: I fell unconscious in the
middle of the garden; some kind people assisted me, and
afterwards took me home, which was not far off. What torture
when, on climbing the stairs, I hovered between a fear which
was almost a certainty and a slight hope that I had forgotten
to take the pamphlet! As I approached my husband's bedroom,
I felt myself fainting once more; I went in at last; nothing
on the table; I went up to the bed; I first felt the pillow,
I perceived nothing; I lifted it up, and saw the roll of
papers! My heart beats whenever I think of it. I have never
experienced such a moment of joy in my life. Certainly, I can
truthfully say that it would not have been so great had I
seen myself released at the foot of the scaffold; for, after
all, it was some one dearer to me than myself whom I saw
released from it."

How unhappy should I be if I could have caused a moment of trouble to Madame de Chateaubriand!

I had nevertheless been obliged to entrust a printer[118] with my secret: he had consented to risk the business; according to the news of the hour, he used to return the half-composed proofs to me, or come to fetch them back, as the sound of the cannon approached or drew farther from Paris: I played pitch-and-toss with my life, in this way, for nearly a fortnight.

[Sidenote: War at the gates of Paris.]

The circle was drawing closer around the capital: at every moment we heard of some progress on the part of the enemy. Russian prisoners and French wounded entered promiscuously through the barriers, drawn in carts: some, half-dead, fell beneath the wheels, which they stained with their blood. Conscripts called up from the interior crossed the capital in a long file on their way to the armies. At night, one heard trains of artillery pass along the outer boulevards, and one did not know whether the distant detonations announced the decisive victory or the final defeat.

The war at last came and fixed itself outside the barriers of Paris. From the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, one could see the head of the Russian columns appear, like the first undulations of the tide of the sea upon a beach. I felt what a Roman must have experienced when, from the ridge of the Capitol, he beheld the soldiers of Alaric[119] and the old city of the Latins at his feet, as I beheld the Russian soldiers and, at my feet, the old city of the Gauls. Farewell, then, paternal gods, hearths which preserved the traditions of the country, roofs beneath which had breathed both Virginia[120], sacrificed by her father to modesty and liberty, and Héloïse, consecrated by love to letters and religion.

Paris had not since centuries seen the smoke of an enemy's camp, and it was Bonaparte who, from triumph to triumph, brought the Thebans within sight of the women of Sparta. Paris was the bourn from which he had started to conquer the earth: he returned to it leaving behind him the huge conflagration of his useless conquests.

The people rushed to the Jardin des Plantes, which, in olden times, the fortified Abbey of St. Victor might have been able to protect: the small world of swans and plantain-trees, to which our power had promised an eternal peace, was perturbed. From the summit of the labyrinth, looking over the great cedar, over the public granaries which Bonaparte had not had time to complete, beyond the site of the Bastille and the keep of Vincennes (spots which told the tale of our successive history), the crowd watched the infantry-fire in the combat of Belleville. Montmartre was carried: the cannon-balls fell as far as the Boulevard du Temple. A few companies of the National Guard made a sortie and lost three hundred men in the fields around the tomb of the "martyrs." Never did military France, in the midst of her reverses, shine with a brighter glory; the last heroes were the one hundred and fifty lads of the Polytechnic School, transformed into gunners in the redoubts on the Vincennes Road. Surrounded by the enemy, they refused to surrender; they had to be tom from their pieces: the Russian grenadier seized them, blackened with gun-powder and covered with wounds; while they struggled in his arms, he lifted those young French palm-branches in the air with cries of victory and admiration and restored them all bleeding to their mothers.

During that time Cambacérès was fleeing with Marie-Louise, the King of Rome and the Regency. The following proclamation was read on the walls:

"KING JOSEPH[121], LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF THE EMPEROR,
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL GUARD.

"CITIZENS OF PARIS,

"The Council of Regency has provided for the safety of the
Empress and the King of Rome: I remain with you. Let us arm
ourselves to defend this town, its monuments, its riches, our
wives, our children, all that is dear to us. Let this vast
city become a camp for a short while, and let the enemy meet
with his disgrace under its walls, which he hopes to surmount
in triumph."

Rostopschin[122] did not pretend to defend Moscow; he burnt it down. Joseph announced that he would never leave the Parisians, and privately decamped, leaving his courage placarded at the street-corners.

[Sidenote: M. de Talleyrand.]

M. de Talleyrand made one of the Regency appointed by Napoleon. Since the day on which the Bishop of Autun, under the Empire, ceased to be Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had dreamt of but one thing, the disappearance of Bonaparte followed by the regency of Marie-Louise, a regency of which he, the Prince de Bénévent, would have been the head. Bonaparte, in appointing him a member of a provisional regency in 1814, seemed to have favoured his secret wishes. The Napoleonic death had not occurred; there remained for M. de Talleyrand but to hobble at the feet of the colossus whom he was unable to overthrow, and to turn the moment to account on his own behalf: the genius of that man of bargains and compromises lay in contriving. The position presented difficulties: to remain in the capital was the obvious course; but, if Bonaparte returned, the prince, separated from the fugitive Regency, the prince, lagging behind, ran the risk of being shot: on the other hand, how to abandon Paris at the moment when the Allies might be entering it? Would it not be to forego the profits of success, to betray that morrow of events for which M. de Talleyrand was made? So far from leaning towards the Bourbons, he feared them by reason of his various apostacies. However, since there was some sort of chance for them, M. de Vitrolles[123], with the assent of the married prelate, had stealthily repaired to the Congress of Châtillon, as the unavowed whisperer of the Legitimacy. Having taken this precaution, the prince, in order to get clear of his difficulties in Paris, had recourse to one of those tricks of which he was a past master.

M. de Laborie, who, soon after, became confidential secretary to the Provisional Government under M. Dupont de Nemours[124], went to M. de Laborde, who was attached to the National Guard, and revealed the fact of M. de Talleyrand's departure:

"He is preparing," said he, "to follow the Regency; it will perhaps appear necessary to you to arrest him, in order to be in a position to negociate with the Allies if need be."

The comedy was played to perfection. The prince's carriages were ostentatiously got ready; he started at broad noon-day, on the 30th of March: on reaching the Barrière d'Enfer, he was inexorably sent back home, in spite of his protestations. In case of a miraculous return, the proofs were there showing that the ex-minister had tried to join Marie-Louise and that the armed force had prevented his passage.

Meantime, on the advent of the Allies, the Comte Alexandre de Laborde and M. Tourton, superior officers of the National Guard, had been sent to the Generalissimo, Prince von Schwarzenberg[125], who had been one of Bonaparte's generals during the Russian campaign. The Generalissimo's proclamation was made known in Paris on the evening of the 30th of March. It said:

"For twenty years Europe has been inundated with blood
and tears: the attempts made to put an end to all these
sufferings have been useless, because the very principle
of the government by which you are oppressed contains an
insurmountable obstacle to peace. Parisians, you know the
situation in which your country is placed: the preservation
and the tranquillity of your city will be the object of the
cares of the Allies. It is with these sentiments that Europe,
in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!"

What a magnificent acknowledgment of France's greatness:

"Europe, in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!"

[Sidenote: Capitulation of Paris.]

We, who had respected nothing, were respected by those whose towns we had ravaged and who, in their turn, had become the stronger. We appeared as a sacred nation in their eyes; our lands were to them as a field of Elis upon which, by order of the gods, no battalion dared trample. If, notwithstanding, Paris had thought fit to offer a resistance, very easily made, of four-and-twenty hours, the results would have been changed; but nobody, except the soldiers intoxicated with fire and glory, wanted any more of Bonaparte, and, dreading lest they should keep him, the people hastened to open the gates.

Paris capitulated on the 31st of March: the military capitulation is signed, in the names of Marshals Mortier; and Marmont, by Colonels Denys[126] and Fabvier[127]; the civil capitulation was made in the names of the mayors of Paris. The Municipal and Departmental Council sent a deputation to the Russian head-quarters to arrange the several clauses: my companion in exile, Christian de Lamoignon, was one of the delegates. Alexander said to them:

"Your Emperor, who was my ally, came into the very heart of my States to bring with him evils of which the traces will long remain: a just defense has brought me here. I am far from wishing to return to France the wrongs which she has done me. I am just, and I know that the French: are not to blame. The French are my friends, and I wish to prove to them that I have come to return good for evil. Napoleon is my only enemy. I promise my special protection to the city of Paris; I shall protect and preserve all public institutions; I shall let only picked troops remain there; I shall preserve your National Guard, which is composed of the pick of your citizens. It is for yourselves to ensure your happiness in the future; you must give yourselves a government which will procure your repose and that of Europe. It is for you to express your wish: you will always find me ready to second your efforts."

These words were punctually fulfilled: the joy of victory surmounted every other interest in the eyes of the Allies. What must have been Alexander's feelings when he caught sight of the domes of the buildings of that town where no foreigner had ever entered except to admire us, to revel in the marvels of our civilization and our intelligence; of that inviolable city, defended by its great men during twelve Centuries; of that glorious capital which Louis XIV. seemed still to protect with his shade and Bonaparte with his return!

[86] Alcibiades (450-404 B.C.) started on his ill-fated expedition to Sicily in 416 B.C.--T.

[87] Alcinous King of the Phæacians, who welcomed Ulysses in the island of Corcyra.--T.

[88] Pericles (_circa_ 494-429 B.C.) was Alcibiades' uncle and instructor.--T.

[89] Aspasia had married Pericles after having been his mistress.--T.

[90] Charles XIV. King of Sweden (1764-1844), as General Bernadotte, was adopted by Charles XIII., abjured Catholicism, fought against France in 1813, and succeeded in 1818.--T.

[91] Attila, King of the Huns (_d._ 453). He claimed half the Western Empire as the betrothed husband of Honoria.--T.

[92] Justa Grata Honoria (_b. circa_ 418), a Roman princess, daughter of Constantius III., Emperor of the West. She was disgraced and kept guarded because of her intrigue with Eugenius, and is said to have sent to Attila to claim her as his bride.--T.

[93] Valentinian III. (419-455), Honoria's brother. The losses of his reign included Africa (to the Vandals), Britain, and large parts of Gaul and Spain.--T.

[94] Here I omit Chateaubriand's long history of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, extending over two books of these Memoirs. The publishers propose to issue it as a supplementary volume when the publication of the Memoirs proper has been completed.--T.

[95] Alexander I. Paulowitch, Emperor of Russia (1777-1825).--T.

[96] The Dowager-Empress Maria Sophia Dorothea Augusta (1759-1828), widow of Paul I., and daughter of Frederic Eugene Duke of Wurtemberg-Mümpelgard.--T.

[97] 27 January 1814.--T.

[98] 29 January 1814. Napoleon had been educated at the military school at Brienne.--T.

[99] 10 February 1814.--T.

[100] 11 February.--T.

[101] 18 February.--T.

[102] 1 March 1814.--B.

[103] Under the command of Marshal Augereau, Duc de Castiglione.--B.

[104] The Congress of Châtillon, between the four allied Powers and France, had opened on the 5th of February 1814. France was represented by the Duc de Vicence; Austria by Count von Stadion; Prussia by Baron von Humboldt; Russia by Count Razumowsky; England by Sir Charles Stuart, with Lord Cathcart and the Earl of Aberdeen.--T.

[105] Field-Marshal Gebhart Lebrecht von Blücher, Prince of Wahlstadt (1743-1819), who played a prominent part in command of the Prussian forces in the Waterloo campaign.--T.

[106] 7 March 1814.--T.

[107] 27 February.--T.

[108] 4 March.--T.

[109] Napoleon drove a Russian corps out of Rheims on the 13th of March 1814.--T.

[110] The Battle of Arcis-Sur-Aube lasted two days (20 and 21 March). It was the last battle which Napoleon delivered in person in this campaign. He had to abandon the field to the enemy; but the two days were none the less most glorious for the French soldiers and their leader. Napoleon's 20,000 men had resisted a mass which rose successively from 40,000 to 90,000.--B.

[111] I have heard General Pozzo tell that it was he who persuaded the Emperor Alexander to march forward.--_Author's Note._

The resolution to march on Paris was taken on the 24th of March, at Sommepuis.--B.

[112] Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, Maréchal Duc de Raguse (1774-1852), one of Napoleon's most distinguished commanders. Under the Restoration, he became a peer of France and Major-General of the Royal Guard, and he clung to the Elder Line after the usurpation of the Duc d'Orléans. Marmont was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Science in 1816.--T.

[113] Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, Maréchal Duc de Trévise (1768-1835), played a prominent part in the Republic and the Empire. He was created a peer of France under the First Restoration, but rallied to Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was deprived of his peerage in 1815, on refusing to try Marshal Ney. He sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1816 to 1819, when his peerage was restored to him; accepted the office of Minister for War under the Usurpation; and was killed, in July 1835, by Fieschi's infernal machine, while riding by the side of Louis-Philippe.--T.

[114] He arrived at Fontainebleau in the night of the 30th of March. The Capitulation of Paris was signed at two o'clock on the morning of the 31st.--B.

[115] Pope Pius VII., who had been released from his captivity at Fontainebleau early in the year.--T.

[116] The Marquise de Montcalm was the half-sister of the Duc de Richelieu. Their father, the Duc de Fronsac, had married twice, first, Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, by whom he had a son, the future minister of the Restoration; secondly, Mademoiselle de Gallifet, by whom he had two daughters, Armande and Simplicie, who became Marquise de Montcalm and Marquise de Jumilhac respectively.--B.

[117] Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1766-1822), emigrated in 1789 and served with distinction in the Russian Army. He returned to France in 1814 and in the following year was appointed President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He used his great influence with the Emperor of Russia in order to reduce the period of the foreign occupation, at the end of which, in 1818, he retired from office, the Chambers voting him a reward of 50,000 francs a year, the whole of which he devoted to the endowment of a hospital at Bordeaux. In 1820, he was again appointed Prime Minister, after the assassination of the Duc de Berry, and set himself to repress the spirit of independence and discontent which was being displayed. His consequent loss of popularity caused him to resign in 1821, and he died a few months later, in 1822, universally esteemed.--T.

[118] M. Mame, the founder of the great Tours publishing-house.--T.

[119] Alaric I. King of the Visigoths (382-412) besieged Rome three times in 409 and 410, and took the city by assault in the latter year.--T.

[120] Virginia was killed by her father, Virginius, in 449 B.C., to save her from the lust of Appius Claudius, one of the Decemvirs of Rome. The people rose after this event, which led to the abolition of the Decemvirate.--T.

[121] Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), Napoleon's elder brother, was King of Naples from 1806 to 1808, and King of Spain from 1808 to 1813. After Waterloo, he took refuge in the United States, where he lived for eleven years as Comte de Survilliers, returning to Europe in 1826, when he resided successively in England and Italy until his death in 1844.--T.

[122] General Feodor Count Rostopschin (1765-1826) was Governor of Moscow in 1812 at the time of the French invasion, when he set fire to the town in order to deprive the enemy of all resources.--T.

[123] Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles (1774-1854), had fought in the Army of Condé, but was created a baron of the Empire in 1812. He took up the cause of the Bourbons in 1814, and was imprisoned by Bonaparte during the Hundred Days. Under the Second Restoration, he became principal agent of the personal policy of Monsieur (the Comte d'Artois). He was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence in 1827 and created a peer in 1830. The fall of the Elder Branch drove him back into private life.--B.

[124] Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), author of a number of works on economy, politics, physiology, natural history and general physics, had remained loyal to Louis XVI. under the Revolution, and fled to America during the Terror. He returned to France under the Consulate. In 1814, he was appointed Secretary to the Provisional Government; but, after the return of Napoleon, he went back to America, where he died two years later. Dupont de Nemours was one of the original members of the Institute.--T.

[125] Karl Philipp Field-Marshal Prince von Schwarzenberg (1771-1819), the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, had distinguished himself at Hohenlinden in 1800 and during the campaign of 1805. He negotiated the marriage between Napoleon and Marie-Louise, and commanded the Austrian auxiliaries in the French campaign against Russia.--T.

[126] Charles Marie Denys, Comte de Damrémont (1783-1837). He espoused the King's cause in 1814. In 1830, he was given a brigade in the Algerian Expedition, was created a peer of France in 1830, and Governor of the French North-African Possessions in 1837, but was killed on the 13th of October of the same year at the taking of Constantine.--T.

[127] Charles Nicolas Baron Fabvier (1782-1855). General Fabvier got himself into trouble in 1820, and was obliged to leave France. In 1823 he offered his services to the Greeks in their War of Independence, and defended the Acropolis of Athens in 1826. He returned to France in 1830, on the outbreak of the Revolution. Louis-Philippe made him a lieutenant-general and a peer (1845). In 1848 he was sent as Ambassador of the Republic to Constantinople, and later to Denmark. He retired into private life after the _coup d'État_ of 1851.--T.