MEMOIRES SUR LES CENT JOURS, EN FORME DE LETTRES. any THIS is a very sensible production, written with moderation, and with a considerable portion of eloquence and force, and calculated to throw much light upon the anomalous and mysterious events connected with the reign of the Hundred Days. We of this country have hitherto been so often amused with cunningly devised fables about an extensive and gigantic conspiracy, formed immediately after Napoleon had abdicated in 1814, and gradually matured till his return from Elba in 1815, the object of which was, of course, the expulsion of the Bourbons, and the re-establishment of the dynasty of Buonaparte, that it is no easy matter to bring down the mind from the lofty dreams of the marvellous, to lend a patient and attentive car to a dry statement of facts. The details of this fearful combination, of which, by the way, nobody in France happened to know thing, have in this country been given with astonishing minuteness, and the most palpable, and even impossible figments, have been told and believed with an audacity on the one hand, and a credulity on the other, which verify the ancient maxim: Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur." The appetite for the marvellous generally increases in the direct ratio of ignorance, and when once men become panders to their own passions, it is next to impossible to induce them to reflect patiently, and to reason logically. Besides, this is the age of plots, treasons, and secret committees, and it could not, therefore, have for a moment been credited, that, without the aid of a deeply laid and widely ramified confederation of traitors, Buonaparte could have rode in an open carriage, from the village of Cannes to the walls of Paris, without encountering even the shadow of resistance. But the object of the author will be best stated in his own words. "I purpose to publish in the form of letters, Memoirs of the Hundred Days, and I shall select as the subject of each letter, certain questions which I shall examine in detail. What were the real causes of the tri By M. Benjamin Constant. Part I. PP. 182. VOL. VIII. umph of Napoleon on the 20th of March ? What sort of popularity ensured this triumph? By what means might he have been successfully opposed? By what party were insurmountable obstacles thrown in the way of having recourse to those means? In their system of discouragement and apathy, had not this faction entertained the ultimate notion of leaving the field open for the return of Buonaparte, in order to bend down France under the overwhelming weight of foreign power ?" In pursuance of this plan, the author proceeds to treat "of the state of France at the moment of the landing of Buonaparte in 1815," and asserts, that, in consequence of the reverses of the French arms in Russia, Germany, and afterwards in France itself, prior to 1814, the elevation of the Bourbons to the throne, which, for twenty years, they had ceased to occupy, was regarded by a vast majority of the nation with no other sentiments than those of astonishment and anxiety. The terrible disasters of the Russian campaign had obviously paralyzed the energies of the French nation. They had beheld, with astonishment and terror, the annihilation of the overwhelming and apparently invincible force which they had sent forth to subdue the modern Scythians. The invincibility of their military ruler, the spell by which his gigantic power had been consolidated, was broken; the resources of the country were exhausted; and the flower of the French youth had been devoured by the sword, or been swallowed up among the frost, snows, and steppes of Rus sia. Cultivators could not be found to plough the fields, and dress the vineyards. Twenty years of war and suffering had chilled the military enthusiasm of the people. Hence the popularity of Buonaparte was shaken to its very foundation, and all his efforts, stupendous as they were, proved insufficient to retard the advance of the overwhelming masses of the allies. France required repose, and he was sacrificed to obtain it. But it was, at the same time, impossible they should ever forget that Buonaparte was the creature of the Revolution, with which his interests and his power were indissolubly identified. It was equally impossible not to perceive that the chance of war, and the fate of arms, had led to the restoration of a family, which had been chased from the throne of their ancestors, as some C atonement for the miseries which a long succession of sixty-six kings had inflicted on their country; a family, hostile from every feeling of pride, interest, or revenge, to the principles of the Revolution, and which, being restored by foreign bayonets, would rely mainly on foreign aid. A whole army of emigrants, too, returning with their prejudices in full vigour, and rendered incurable by adversity and persecution, and perceiving the estates which they had abandoned when the storm of Revolutionary frenzy first burst upon France, in the possession of upstarts, novi homines, could not behold, with much grace or satisfaction, a condition of things, the subversion of which they believed indispensable towards their being reinstated in their just and natural rights, and the maintenance of which, on the part of the Bourbons, would amount to nothing less, in their estimation, than an inexpiable apostacy from those principles for which they had suffered the loss of all things. The purchasers of the national property must, on the other hand, have been equally alarmed. Sensible they were obnoxious to the new comers, and that they had pushed them from their stools, mutual hostility sprung up, and faction soon assumed an aspect that would have been formidable ever. to the most firmly established thrones. In such nice and critical a juncture, the greatest wisdom was alone competent to allay the angry spirit which had been conjured up, and to maintain at once public tranquillity and public justice. That the Bourbons should have erred is by no means a matter of wonder or inculpation; that they should have succeeded in the conciliation of the contending factions, and in the consolidation of their government, would have been little short of an absolute miracle. Jealousy on the one hand, and distrust on the other: the national humiliation that preceded their restoration, contrasted with the proud trophies of national prow ess, by which the dynasty of Napoleon had been so long upheld, and with which his name was so closely blended: the fears of the possessors of national property: the prejudices of the ancient noblesse, called in mockery Les veterans de la fuite: the excesses of those since denominated Liberaux: and, finally, the al most unconquerable antipathy which every Frenchman of the revolutionary school (that is, nine-tenths of the whole population) bore to the name of a Bourbon: all ard each of these circumstances were brought into immediate operation, to the prejudice of the restored family, and tended to awaken souvenirs les plus dangereux of that great, though guilty man, at one period of his career the pride of France, and the terror of Europe. It was the peculiar and irremediable misfortune of the Bourbons, that even by attaching themselves exclusively to the liberals, and to the heads of the revolutionary faction, they secured a very precarious support, with questionable sincerity, as the nation would have regarded such a system of policy as an unequivocal and very intelligible expression of their conscious weakness; whereas the adoption of an opposite course of policy would have thrown the government into the hands of men, as ignorant of the internal state and condition of France in point of knowledge, property, and political sentiment, as if they had lived in the days of the Frondeurs, or of the League. Nor would this have been all. The whole weight of the Revolution would have been cast into the opposite scale. It is easy, therefore, to see that the Bourbons were placed in a very ticklish predicament, which was not rendered less difficult or dangerous, by their throwing themselves into the hands of that revolutionary Proteus, Talleyrand. "This statesman," says our author," who entered into the career of patriotism under the most brilliant auspices, has invariably brought calamity on liberty. His name is connected with all those days from 1797 to 1815, in which despotism triumphed. Is it not one of the most singular caprices of fortune, so severe to others, that she has, in certain circumstances, been merciful to him? Is this an effect of his character? a cannot answer, and not having to pro result of his calculations? These queries I nounce sentence, I have no desire to put him on his trial. I must only observe, because it is an historical truth, which will fall to be noticed in the sequel, that, at the very moment when the Senate, as if to atone for its error, disappeared like a shadow, and left the nation without any constituted body, the minister, its president, remained at the head of affairs, and in possession of authority." P. 15. The grant of a charter on the part of the king, was a virtual abandonment of the principle of legitimité, and of the doctrine of divine and indefeasible right, and a distinct and full admission of the rights and privileges of the people, agreeably, in some measure, to the principles and doctrines of the Revolution. But the mischief was, that the grant was not voluntarily offered, but, in some measure, forced from him, in compliance with the loud and peremptory demands of the people. The mere conceding a constitutional charter at all was indeed a total departure from the doctrine of the old monarchy; but it was a capital error to suppose, though all France demanded a charter, that, therefore, any sort of one would satisfy the unanimous demands of the people. The principles of the charter, conceded or imposed, were, no doubt, at the outside, liberal: much was declared, and more promised; national property was secured to its present owners; and the press declared free: the imprescriptible rights of man were admitted as the basis of the new constitution, in a latitude to which Paine himself would hardly have objected: and, in short, the great and leading doctrines of the Revolution, for the realization of which France had struggled and suffered so incredibly, were, anomalous as it may appear, declared to be the creed of the Bourbon dynasty. This created a just suspicion of the sincerity, if not of the king, at least of his advisers. Nor were the fears of the enemies of government ill founded. The liberty of the press, so solemnly guaranteed, was as solemnly abrogated by the establishment of the most odious, arbitrary, and autocratical censorship; and the holders of national property, which had also been secured in full possession to its present owners, were thrown into alarm by the equivocal preambles of some new laws, (See the preamble of the law relative to the unsold property of the emigrants,) and by certain mysterious, but ominous expressions and actions of that party," royalistes pures et par excellence",) who were understood to enjoy the king's unlimited confidence. In a word, we discover fear on the one hand, and suspicion on the other: the king in terror of his subjects, the subjects doubtful of the king: the monarch willing and anxious to catch the tone of the age, and accommodate his administration to the altered condition and circumstances of the French nation: the people disposed to regard him as the slave of those prejudices, and the tool of that faction, whose crooked policy and evil counsels had brought his brother to the block. Thus we find the sentiment of loyalty completely extinct; and Frenchmen, instead of exhibiting the generous and chivalrous enthusiasm of the former ages of the monarchy, measuring, and calculating, and adjusting their allegiance to the bare standard of convenience or expediency. Add to this, that Louis Dixhuit had been called to mount a throne recently filled by the most unprincipled, but certainly the greatest man of his age, and whose present reverses, though they threw a partial eclipse over the broad disc of his fame, were even calculated to endear him to the hearts of the generous and the brave, who allowed adversity to shed oblivion over his errors and his crimes, and who, even in the proudest hour of his exaltation, had never bowed the knee to Baal. Casting for a moment an eye of observation over the elements of discord then floating in the political atmosphere of France, and recollecting that the country was now governed by men, who, for the fourth part of a century, had been exiles and fugitives from her shores,-who were without knowledge of her laws, condition, and feelings; it required no singular degree of the prophetical spirit to foretell the coming storm. That the ministers of Louis, however, entertained no such apprehension, is apparent from the declaration of one of them, who had conceived the bright idea, "d'etouffer la liberté par assoupissement," and who, in the absurd belief, that twenty-five years of suffering had extinguished every patriotic sentiment in the breasts of Frenchmen, thought that no more was necessary to effect the re-establishment of the ancient despotism, than to lull the people into security, to mask their insidious operations under the convenient forms of a free government; and, on the supposition that the nation desired peace, at whatever sacrifice, to take advantage of that feeling, in order to rivet firmly, and for ever, the most odious servile fetters. Of the person who entertained and was insane e "But between these errors, but too natural to ministers, some of whom had got their education in exile, in which their chief occupation had been to preserve, as far as circumstances would permit, several of the etiquettes' of royalty, others, under a master, who permitted his instruments to display no other faculties than a blind and mechanical submission to his will; between these errors, I say, and the hazardous prospect of a counter-revolution, the interval was great, and the ministry, of 1814 had not yet cleared it." The errors of the ministry of 1814 appear, however, rather to have proceeded from the uncontrollable nature of the circumstances in which it was their fate to be placed, than from any predisposing affection for despotism, or any regular formed purpose to enslave and degrade their country. Their enemies enjoyed the confidence of the king, from which they were, as much as possible, excluded. "I ascribe," says M. Constant," the imprudences and false measures of 1814 only to a weak ministry, under the absolute control of a violent and domineering faction. Unhappily there existed, out of doors, a faction, contemptible in numbers, but strong from the appearance of the eclát of high rank; proud of the elegance of its modes; believing that power is its right, because good taste is its exclusive pretension; deceived as to its imbecility, because blinded by its vanity; and destined to remain for ever ignorant of France, because finding the nation but sorry company, it thought it not worth while to trouble itself any long er about the matter." P. 23. Among the many extravagances of this weak junto, the pretended idolators of the fame of Louis Seize, whom, in the hour of his greatest peril and utmost need, they had nevertheless meanly and basely deserted, it may ea sily be supposed, that those emblems, which, "les plus glorieux souvenirs de la victoire rendaient nationales," would not escape the imbecile rage manifested by this pitiful junto, when they durst with safety, against every thing associated with the acts and events of the Revolution. Accordingly, the tricolor flag, which had waved over the successful demolition of the Bastile, and floated on the ramparts of the conquered capitals, was, to the great mortification of the army, to whom it was endeared as the emblem and sign of their triumphs, consigned to total reprobation, and every thing of this description in the possession of individuals proscribed as the badge of disaffection to the royal government. A certain class of men amongst us will, we know, affect to treat with derision the importance which we ascribe to this matter; but, however the philosopher may view the matter, certain it is, that all history is full of examples of attachment to insensible objects, which have been rendered the accompaniments of heroic actions, associated with the honours of a triumphant cause, or become the consecrated emblems of patriotism and national glory. Among the Israelites even, every tribe had its appropriate banner. The attachment of the Roman legions to their eagles is known to every school boy. The White and Red Roses of England were, for centuries, the badges of contending sovereigns, and the objects of the warm devotion of their respective partizans. To have offered an insult to the badge or symbol of the party would have been construed into treason against the whole incorporated mass of interest and feeling of which it was the general and the adopted sign. That the expulsion of the tricolor flag from the French army should have deeply affected the veterans of the revolutionary school, who had so often seen it wave triumphantly over the tide of battle, was as natural as it was dangerous and impolitic in those who thus roused up against themselves the fierce prejudices of a body of men, who, in all times and countries, have been either the main pillars or the inevitable and speedy subversion of thrones. But this was not all; the orphans of the Knights of their Legion of Ho nour were threatened with the loss of that modicum of emolument purchased for them by the blood of their sires, in the field of battle; and to add to this act of inhumanity, a thousand invalids ("braves mutilés") were turned adrift upon the world, on the wretched pretence, "that the country of their birth had become the ter ritory of a foreign government;" while fifteen hundred more were sent to their families and relatives with pensions, "shamefully small." In France the Revolution had proved fatal to the established religion, and, by a natural revulsion, men had, as usual, passed from one extreme to another from their detestation of the impostures of the Romish church, to an utter aversion to all religion-from the discovery of gross error in one form of religion, to the total rejection of Christianity itself. Now, however this may be to be regretted, the fact is notorious, that the re-establishment of a national religion, and the solemn Publication of the Concordat by Napoleon, fortified as that was by the complying and ready sanction of his Holiness, tended, in no degree whatever, to recall Frenchmen to a love of and respect for the religion of their forefathers. Interest, indeed, led men in office-expectants-and partizans, to give a sort of reluctant countenance to the religion of the court, which, in their private sentiments, they regarded as a piece of clumsy state-craft, unworthy of the master mind by whom it had been restored. The fact, accordingly, was, that the churches were totally deserted. France, become revolutionary by habit and by education, derided the ancient worship, and left the altars to the priests and a few devotees of the emigrès, who still cherished their ancient and honourable attachment to both religious and political slavery. Bonaparte knew better than any other man the spirit of the age, and the peculiar temper of the nation over which he ruled. He, therefore, restored the Catholic religion-but he did not restore either its ancient mummeries, or its ancient influence. He took care not to run foul of opinions which he could not eradicate, if he would, and which he would not if he could-opi These men were natives of the ceded provinces of the French empire. nions which had raised him from a private station, and invested him with the purple, and of which he was the public and unequivocal expression. Such being the religious condition of France, it required no Daniel to foretell what would be the sentiments of the French nation, when, all of a sudden, they perceived what they regarded as the exploded errors of former times revived, and the number of religious festivals increased to such a degree, as to press most heavily upon all day-labourers,-when they found that they must either comply with rites which they derided, or be reckoned the foes of the monarchy-when, in a word, they could not stir from their houses, in broad day, without being compelled to do homage to the shrines of saints without number, and often of very suspicious fame, or venture abroad under night without running their heads against a wooden virgin, and incurring the dreadful risk of most shamefully and impiously oversetting the Mother of God. A state of things like this could not endure long. The wits made epigrams, the infidels poured out their invectives, the "militaires" looked sulky and dissatisfied,-the common people loudly and fiercely complained, that they were compelled to bestow on a multitudinous assemblage of saints the time when they ought to be labouring for their daily bread,-and the "royalistes pures et par excellence," rejoiced in the re-organization of the old superstition, as a certain forerunner of the re-establishment of tyranny. France, in short, seemed to be thrown back for centuries in the career of improvement. Bad faith embittered these incipient animosities. The charter was conceded, because it could not be refused; and it may be fairly regarded as the proper expression of those doctrines which the Revolution had disseminated, and which the military dynasty of Buonaparte had by no means destroyed or superseded. The frankness and apparent readiness with which the King gave his consent to certain regulations and principles favourable to liberty was unquestionably regarded at first as a favourable omen, and his Majesty had the full benefit of this feeling while it lasted. But, no sooner were matters brought towards the consummation so devoutly to be wish |