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. [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 [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 [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." [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. [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 [The Charta.] The Constitution promulgated by King Louis XVIII. on the 4th of June, 1814, and known as the Charta, [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. [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 Churchlands, 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. [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. [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. [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. [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: [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. [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 |
[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;
[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.
[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,
[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.
[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;
[Marshal Ney.]
[The Chambers in Paris.]
[Napoleon enters Paris, March 20.]
From this time all was over. Marshal Ney, who had set out from Paris protesting that Napoleon deserved to be confined in an iron cage,
[Congress of Vienna outlaws Napoleon.]
[Napoleon's preparations for defence.]
France was won: Europe remained behind. On the 13th of March the Ministers of all the Great Powers, assembled at Vienna, published a manifesto denouncing Napoleon Bonaparte as the common enemy of mankind, and declaring him an outlaw. The whole political structure which had been reared with so much skill by Talleyrand vanished away. France was again alone, with all Europe combined against it. Affairs reverted to the position in which they had stood in the month of March, 1814, when the Treaty of Chaumont was signed, which bound the Powers to sustain their armed concert against France, if necessary, for a period of twenty years. That treaty was now formally renewed.
[Campaign and fall of Murat, April, 1815]
Before Napoleon or his adversaries were ready to move, hostilities broke out in Italy. Murat, King of Naples, had during the winter of 1814 been represented at Vienna by an envoy: he was aware of the efforts made by Talleyrand to expel him from his throne, and knew that the Government of Great Britain, convinced of his own treachery during the pretended combination with the Allies in 1814, now inclined to act with France.
[The Acte Additionnel, April 23, 1815.]
In the midst of his preparations for war with all Europe, Napoleon found it necessary to give some satisfaction to that desire for liberty which was again so strong in France. He would gladly have deferred all political change until victory over the foreigner had restored his own undisputed ascendency over men's minds; he was resolved at any rate not to be harassed by a Constituent Assembly, like that of 1789, at the moment of his greatest peril; and the action of King Louis XVIII. in granting liberty by Charta gave him a precedent for creating a Constitution by an Edict supplementary to the existing laws of the Empire. Among the Liberal politicians who had declared for King Louis XVIII. while Napoleon was approaching Paris, one of the most eminent was Benjamin Constant, who had published an article attacking the Emperor with great severity on the very day when he entered the capital. Napoleon now invited Constant to the Tuileries, assured him that he no longer either desired or considered it possible to maintain an absolute rule in France, and requested Constant himself to undertake the task of drawing up a Constitution. Constant, believing the Emperor to be in some degree sincere, accepted the proposals made to him, and, at the cost of some personal consistency, entered upon the work, in which Napoleon by no means allowed him entire freedom.
[The Chambers summoned for June.]
There would have been no difficulty in obtaining some millions of votes for any absurdity that the Emperor might be pleased to lay before the French people; but among the educated minority who had political theories of their own, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possible impression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of the Emperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected to bestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of the new Constitution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon's object was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, the educated classes as well as the peasantry, to rally round him in a struggle with the foreigner for life or death: he found, on the contrary, that he had actually injured his cause. The hostility of public opinion was so serious that Napoleon judged it wise to make advances to the Liberal party, and sent his brother Joseph to Lafayette, to ascertain on what terms he might gain his support.
[Elections.]
Lafayette's counsel had been given in sincerity, but Napoleon gained little by following it. The nation at large had nothing of the faith in the elections which was felt by Lafayette and his friends. In some places not a single person appeared at the poll: in most, the candidates were elected by a few scores of voters. The Royalists absented themselves on principle: the population generally thought only of the coming war, and let the professed politicians conduct the business of the day by themselves. Among the deputies chosen there were several who had sat in the earlier Assemblies of the Revolution; and, mingled with placemen and soldiers of the Empire, a considerable body of men whose known object was to reduce Napoleon's power. One interest alone was unrepresented-that of the Bourbon family, which so lately seemed to have been called to the task of uniting the old and the new France around itself.
[Champ de Mai.]
Napoleon, troubling himself little about the elections, laboured incessantly at his preparations for war, and by the end of May two hundred thousand men were ready to take the field. The delay of the Allies, though necessary, enabled their adversary to take up the offensive. It was the intention of the Emperor to leave a comparatively small force to watch the eastern frontier, and himself, at the head of a hundred and twenty-five thousand men, to fall upon Wellington and BlÜcher in the Netherlands, and crush them before they could unite their forces. With this object the greater part of the army was gradually massed on the northern roads at points between Paris, Lille, and Maubeuge. Two acts of State remained to be performed by the Emperor before he quitted the capital; the inauguration of the new Constitution and the opening of the Chambers of Legislature. The first, which had been fixed for the 26th of May, and announced as a revival of the old Frankish Champ de Mai, was postponed till the beginning of the following month. On the 1st of June the solemnity was performed with extraordinary pomp and splendour, on that same Champ de Mars where, twenty-five years before, the grandest and most affecting of all the festivals of the Revolution, the Act of Federation, had been celebrated by King Louis XVI. and his people. Deputations from each of the constituencies of France, from the army, and from every public body, surrounded the Emperor in a great amphitheatre enclosed at the southern end of the plain: outside there were ranged twenty thousand soldiers of the Guard and other regiments; and behind them spread the dense crowd of Paris. When the total of the votes given in the PlÉbiscite had been summed up and declared, the Emperor took the oath to the Constitution, and delivered one of his masterpieces of political rhetoric. The great officers of State took the oath in their turn: mass was celebrated, and Napoleon, leaving the enclosed space, then presented their standards to the soldiery in the Champ de Mars, addressing some brief, soul-stirring word to each regiment as it passed. The spectacle was magnificent, but except among the soldiers themselves a sense of sadness and disappointment passed over the whole assembly. The speech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: the applause was forced: all was felt to be ridiculous, all unreal.
[Plan of Napoleon.]
The opening of the Legislative Chambers took place a few days later, and on the night of the 11th of June Napoleon started for the northern frontier. The situation of the forces opposed to him in this his last campaign strikingly resembled that which had given him his first Italian victory in 1796. Then the Austrians and Sardinians, resting on opposite bases, covered the approaches to the Sardinian capital, and invited the assailant to break through their centre and drive the two defeated wings along diverging and severed paths of retreat. Now the English and the Prussians covered Brussels, the English resting westward on Ostend, the Prussians eastward on Cologne, and barely joining hands in the middle of a series of posts nearly eighty miles long. The Emperor followed the strategy of 1796. He determined to enter Belgium by the central road of Charleroi, and to throw his main force upon BlÜcher, whose retreat, if once he should be severed from his colleague, would carry him eastwards towards LiÈge, and place him outside the area of hostilities round Brussels. BlÜcher driven eastwards, Napoleon believed that he might not only push the English commander out of Brussels, but possibly, by a movement westwards, intercept him from the sea and cut off his communication with Great Britain.
[Situation of the armies.]
On the night of the 13th of June, the French army, numbering a hundred and twenty-nine thousand men, had completed its concentration, and lay gathered round Beaumont and Philippeville. Wellington was at Brussels; his troops, which consisted of thirty-five thousand English and about sixty thousand Dutch, Germans, and
[Ligny, June 16.]
But the march of the invader was too rapid for the English to reach the field of battle. Already, on returning to Quatre Bras in the afternoon, Wellington found his own troops hotly engaged. Napoleon had sent Ney along the road to Brussels to hold the English in check and, if possible, to enter the capital, while he himself, with seventy thousand men, attacked BlÜcher. The Prussian general had succeeded in bringing up a force superior in number to his assailants; but the French army, which consisted in a great part of veterans recalled to the ranks, was of finer quality than any that Napoleon had led since the campaign of Moscow, and it was in vain that BlÜcher and his soldiers met them with all the gallantry and even more than the fury of 1813. There was murderous hand-to-hand fighting in the villages where the Prussians had taken up their position: now the defenders, now the assailants gave way: but at last the Prussians, with a loss of thirteen thousand men, withdrew from the combat, and left the battlefield in possession of the enemy. If the conquerors had followed up the pursuit that night, the cause of the Allies would have been ruined. The effort of battle had, however, been too great, or the estimate which Napoleon made of his adversary's rallying power was too low. He seems to have assumed that BlÜcher must necessarily retreat eastwards towards Namur; while in reality the Prussian was straining every nerve to escape northwards, and to restore his severed communication with his ally.
[Quatre Bras, June 16.]
At Quatre Bras the issue of the day was unfavourable to the French. Ney missed his opportunity of seizing this important point before it was occupied by the British in any force; and when the battle began the British infantry-squares unflinchingly bore the attack of Ney's cavalry, and drove them back again and again with their volleys, until successive reinforcements had made the numbers on both sides even. At the close of the day the French marshal, baffled and disheartened, drew back his troops to their original position. The army-corps of General d'Erlon, which Napoleon had placed between himself and Ney in order that it might act wherever there was the greatest need, was first withdrawn from Ney to assist at Ligny, and then, as it was entering into action at Ligny, recalled to Quatre Bras, where it arrived only after the battle was over. Its presence in either field would probably have altered the issue of the campaign.
[Prussian movement.]
BlÜcher, on the night of the 16th, lay disabled and almost senseless; his lieutenant, Gneisenau, not only saved the army, but repaired, and more than repaired, all its losses by a memorable movement northwards that brought the Prussians again into communication with the British. Napoleon, after an unexplained inaction during the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, committed the pursuit of the Prussians to Marshal Grouchy, ordering him never to let the enemy out of his sight; but BlÜcher and Gneisenau had already made their escape, and had concentrated so large a body in the neighbourhood of Wavre, that Grouchy could not now have prevented a force superior to his own from uniting with the English, even if he had known the exact movements of each of the three armies, and, with a true presentiment of his master's danger, had attempted to rejoin him on the morrow.
Wellington, who had both anticipated that BlÜcher would be beaten at Ligny, and assured himself that the Prussian would make good his retreat northwards, moved on the 17th from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, now followed by Napoleon and the mass of the French army. At Waterloo he drew up for battle, trusting to the promise of the gallant Prussian that he would advance in that direction on the following day. BlÜcher, in so doing, exposed himself to the risk of having his communications severed and half his army captured, if Napoleon should either change the direction of his main attack and bend eastwards, or should crush Wellington before the arrival of the Prussians, and seize the road from Brussels to Louvain with a victorious force. Such considerations would have driven a commander like Schwarzenberg back to LiÈge, but they were thrown to the winds by BlÜcher and Gneisenau. In just reliance on his colleague's energy, Wellington, with thirty thousand English and forty thousand Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, awaited the attack of Napoleon, at the head of seventy-four thousand veteran soldiers. The English position extended two miles along the brow of a gentle slope of cornfields, and crossed at right angles the great road from Charleroi to Brussels; the chÂteau of Hugomont, some way down the slope on the right, and the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, on the high-road in front of the left centre, served as fortified outposts. The French formed on the opposite and corresponding slope; the country was so open that, but for the heavy rain on the evening of the 17th, artillery could have moved over almost any part of the field with perfect freedom.
[Waterloo, June 18.]
At eleven o'clock on Sunday, the 18th of June, the battle began. Napoleon, unconscious of the gathering of the Prussians on his right, and unacquainted with the obstinacy of English troops, believed the victory already thrown into his hands by Wellington's hardihood. His plan was to burst through the left of the English line near La Haye Sainte, and thus to drive Wellington westwards and place the whole French army between its two defeated enemies. The first movement was an assault on the buildings of Hugomont, made for the purpose of diverting Wellington from the true point of attack. The English commander sent detachments to this outpost sufficient to defend it, but no more. After two hours' indecisive fighting and a heavy cannonade, Ney ordered D'Erlon's corps forward to the great onslaught on the centre and left. As the French column pressed up the slope, General Picton charged at the head of a brigade. The English leader was among the first to fall, but his men drove the enemy back, and at the same time the Scots Greys, sweeping down from the left, cut right through both the French infantry and their cavalry supports, and, charging far up the opposite slope, reached and disabled forty of Ney's guns, before they were in their turn overpowered and driven back by the French dragoons. The English lost heavily, but the onslaught of the enemy had totally failed, and thousands of prisoners remained behind. There was a pause in the infantry combat; and again the artillery of Napoleon battered the English centre, while Ney marshalled fresh troops for a new and greater effort. About two o'clock the attack was renewed on the left. La Haye Sainte was carried, and vast masses of cavalry pressed up the English slope, and rode over the plateau to the very front of the English line. Wellington sent no cavalry to meet them, but trusted, and trusted justly, to the patience and endurance of the infantry themselves, who, hour after hour, held their ground, unmoved by the rush of the enemy's horse and the terrible spectacle of havoc and death in their own ranks; for all through the afternoon the artillery of Napoleon poured its fire wherever the line was left open, or the assault of the French cavalry rolled back.
At last the approach of the Prussians visibly told. Napoleon had seen their vanguard early in the day, and had detached Count Lobau with seven thousand men to hold them in check; but the little Prussian corps gradually swelled to an army, and as the day wore on it was found necessary to reinforce Count Lobau with some of the finest divisions of the French infantry. Still reports came in of new Prussian columns approaching. At six o'clock Napoleon prepared to throw his utmost strength into one grand final attack upon the British, and to sweep them away before the battle became general with their allies. Two columns of the Imperial Guard, supported by every available regiment, moved from the right and left towards the English centre. The column on the right, unchecked by the storm of Wellington's cannon-shot from front and flank, pushed to the very ridge of the British slope, and came within forty yards of the cross-road where the English Guard lay hidden. Then Wellington gave the order to fire. The French recoiled; the English advanced at the charge, and drove the enemy down the hill, returning themselves for a while to their own position. The left column of the French Guard attacked with equal bravery, and met with the same fate. Then, while the French were seeking to re-form at the bottom of the hill, Wellington commanded a general advance. The whole line of the British infantry and cavalry swept down into the valley; before them the baffled and sorely-stricken host of the enemy broke into a confused mass; only the battalions of the old Guard, which had halted in the rear of the attacking columns, remained firm together. BlÜcher, from the east, dealt the death-blow, and, pressing on to the road by which the French were escaping, turned the defeat into utter ruin and dispersion. The pursuit, which Wellington's troops were too exhausted to attempt, was carried on throughout the night by the Prussian cavalry with memorable ardour and terrible success. Before the morning the French army was no more than a rabble of fugitives.
[Napoleon at Paris.]
[Allies enter Paris, July 7.]
Napoleon fled to Philippeville, and made some ineffectual attempts both there and at Laon to fix a rallying point for his vanished forces. From Laon he hastened to Paris, which he reached at sunrise on the 21st. His bulletin describing the defeat of Waterloo was read to the Chambers on the same morning. The Lower House immediately declared against the Emperor, and demanded his abdication. Unless Napoleon seized the dictatorship his cause was lost. Carnot and Lucien Bonaparte urged him to dismiss the Chambers and to stake all on his own strong will; but they found no support among the Emperor's counsellors. On the next day Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son. But it was in vain that he attempted to impose an absent successor upon France, and to maintain his own Ministers in power. It was equally in vain that Carnot, filled with the memories of 1793, called upon the Assembly to continue the war and to provide for the defence of Paris. A Provisional Government entered upon office. Days were spent in inaction and debate while the Allies advanced through France. On the 28th of June, the Prussians appeared on the north of the capital; and, as the English followed, they moved to the south of the Seine, out of the range of the fortifications with which Napoleon had covered the side of St. Denis and Montmartre. Davoust, with almost all the generals in Paris, declared defence to be impossible. On the 3rd of July, a capitulation was signed. The remnants of the French army were required to withdraw beyond the Loire. The Provisional Government dissolved itself; the Allied troops entered the capital and on the following day the Members of the Chamber of Deputies, on arriving at their Hall of Assembly, found the gates closed, and a detachment of soldiers in possession. France was not, even as a matter of form, consulted as to its future government. Louis XVIII. was summarily restored to his throne. Napoleon, who had gone to Rochefort with the intention of sailing to the United States, lingered at Rochefort until escape was no longer possible, and then embarked on the British ship Bellerophon, commending himself, as a second Themistocles, to the generosity of the Prince Regent of England. He who had declared that the lives of a million men were nothing to him
[Wellington and FouchÉ.]
Victory had come so swiftly that the Allied Governments were unprepared with terms of peace. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria were still at Heidelberg when the battle of Waterloo was fought; they had advanced no further than Nancy when the news reached them that Paris had surrendered. Both now hastened to the capital, where Wellington was already exercising the authority to which his extraordinary successes as well as his great political superiority over all the representatives of the Allies then present, entitled him. Before the entry of the English and Prussian troops into Paris he had persuaded Louis XVIII. to sever himself from the party of reaction by calling to office the regicide FouchÉ, head of the existing Provisional Government. FouchÉ had been guilty of the most atrocious crimes at Lyons in 1793; he had done some of the worst work of each succeeding government in France; and, after returning to his old place as Napoleon's Minister of Police during the Hundred Days, he had intrigued as early as possible for the restoration of Louis XVIII., if indeed he had not held treasonable communication with the enemy during the campaign. His sole claim to power was that every gendarme and every informer in France had at some time acted as his agent, and that, as a regicide in office, he might possibly reconcile Jacobins and Bonapartists to the second return of the Bourbon family. Such was the man whom, in association with Talleyrand, the Duke of Wellington found himself compelled to propose as Minister to Louis XVIII. The appointment, it was said, was humiliating, but it was necessary; and with the approval of the Count of Artois the King invited this blood-stained eavesdropper to an interview and placed him in office. Need subdued the scruples of the courtiers: it could not subdue the resentment of that grief-hardened daughter of Louis XVI. whom Napoleon termed the only man of her family. The Duchess of AngoulÊme might have forgiven the Jacobin FouchÉ the massacres at Lyons: she refused to speak to a Minister whom she termed one of the murderers of her father.
[Disagreement on terms of peace.]
FouchÉ had entered into a private negotiation with Wellington while the English were on the outskirts of Paris, and while the authorised envoys of the Assembly were engaged elsewhere. Wellington's motive for recommending him to the King was the indifference or hostility felt by some of the Allies to Louis XVIII. personally, which led the Duke to believe that if Louis did not regain his throne before the arrival of the sovereigns he might never regain it at all.
[Arguments for and against cessions.]
[Prussia isolated.]
[Second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20.]
The arguments for and against the severance of the border-provinces from France were drawn at great length by diplomatists, but all that was essential in them was capable of being very briefly put. On the one side, it was urged by Stein and Hardenberg that the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 with an undiminished territory had not prevented France from placing itself at the end of a few months under the rule of the military despot whose life was one series of attacks on his neighbours: that the expectation of long-continued peace, under whatever dynasty, was a vain one so long as the French possessed a chain of fortresses enabling them at any moment to throw large armies into Germany or the Netherlands: and finally, that inasmuch as Germany, and not England or Russia, was exposed to these irruptions, Germany had the first right to have its interests consulted in providing for the public security. On the other side, it was argued by the Emperor Alexander, and with far greater force by the Duke of Wellington,
[Treaty of Holy Alliance, Sept. 26.]
It was in the interval between the entry of the Allies into Paris and the definitive conclusion of peace that a treaty was signed which has gained a celebrity in singular contrast with its real insignificance, the Treaty of Holy Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander had rendered many public acts of homage to religion in the intervals of diplomatic and military success in the year 1814; and after the second capture of Paris he drew up a profession of religious and political faith, embodying, as he thought, those high principles by which the Sovereigns of Europe, delivered from the iniquities of Napoleon, were henceforth to maintain the reign of peace and righteousness on
[Treaty between the Four Powers, Nov. 20.]
Such was the history of the Treaty of Holy Alliance, of which, it may be safely said, no single person connected with it, except the Czar and the King of Prussia, thought without a smile. The common belief that this Treaty formed the basis of a great monarchical combination against Liberal principles is erroneous; for, in the first place, no such combination existed before the year 1818; and, in the second place, the Czar, who was the author of the Treaty, was at this time the zealous friend of Liberalism both in his own and in other countries. The concert of the Powers was indeed provided for by articles signed on the same day as the Peace of Paris; but this concert, which, unlike the Holy Alliance, included England, was directed towards the perpetual exclusion of Napoleon from power, and the maintenance of the established Government in France. The Allies pledged themselves to act in union if revolution or usurpation should again convulse France and endanger the repose of other States, and undertook to resist with their whole force any attack that might be made upon the army of occupation. The federative unity which for a moment Europe seemed to have gained from the struggle against Napoleon, and the belief existing in some quarters in its long continuance, were strikingly shown in the last article of this Quadruple Treaty, which provided that, after the holding of a Congress at the end of three or more years, the Sovereigns or Ministers of all the four great Powers should renew their meetings at fixed intervals, for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests, and considering the measures best fitted to secure the repose and prosperity of nations, and the continuance of the peace of Europe.
[German Federation.]
Thus terminated, certainly without any undue severity, yet not without some loss to the conquered nation, the work of 1815 in France. In the meantime the Congress of Vienna, though interrupted by the renewal of war, had resumed and completed its labours. One subject of the first importance remained unsettled when Napoleon returned, the federal organisation of Germany. This work had been referred by the Powers in the autumn of 1814 to a purely German committee, composed of the representatives of Austria and Prussia and of three of the Minor States; but the first meetings of the committee only showed how difficult was the problem, and how little the inclination in most quarters to solve it. The objects with which statesmen like Stein demanded an effective federation were thoroughly plain and practical. They sought, in the first place, that Germany should be rendered capable of defending itself against the foreigner; and in the second place, that the subjects of the minor princes, who had been made absolute rulers by Napoleon, should now be guaranteed against despotic oppression. To secure Germany from being again conquered by France, it was necessary that the members of the League, great and small, should abandon something of their separate sovereignty, and create a central authority with the sole right of making war and alliances. To protect the subjects of the minor princes from the abuse of power, it was necessary that certain definite civil rights and a measure of representative government should be assured by Federal Law to the inhabitants of every German State, and enforced by the central authority on the appeal of subjects against their Sovereigns. There was a moment when some such form of German union had seemed to be close at hand, the moment when Prussia began its final struggle with Napoleon, and the commander of the Czar's army threatened the German vassals of France with the loss of their thrones (Feb., 1813). But even then no statesman had satisfied himself how Prussia and Austria were to unite in submission to a Federal Government; and from the time when Austria made terms with the vassal princes little hope of establishing a really effective authority at the centre of Germany remained. Stein, at the Congress of Vienna, once more proposed to restore the title and the long-vanished powers of the Emperor; but he found no inclination on the part of Metternich to promote his schemes for German unity, while some of the minor princes flatly refused to abandon any fraction of their sovereignty over their own subjects. The difficulties in the way of establishing a Federal State were great, perhaps insuperable; the statesmen anxious for it few in number; the interests opposed to it all but universal. Stein saw that the work was intended to be unsubstantial, and withdrew himself from it before its completion. The Act of Federation,
[Final Act of the Congress, June 10.]
German affairs, as usual, were the last to be settled at the Congress; when these were at length disposed of, the Congress embodied the entire mass of its resolutions in one great Final Act
[Alsace and Lorraine.]
But if the policy of 1814-15 in the affairs of Belgium and Piedmont only proves how little an average collection of statesmen can see into the future, the policy which, in spite of Waterloo, left France in possession of an undiminished territory, does no discredit to the foresight, as it certainly does the highest honour to the justice and forbearance of Wellington, whose counsels then turned the scale. The wisdom of the resolution has indeed been frequently impugned. German statesmen held then, and have held ever since, that the opportunity of disarming France once for all of its weapons of attack was wantonly thrown away. Hardenberg, when his arguments for annexation of the frontier-fortresses were set aside, predicted that streams of blood would hereafter flow for the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine,
[English efforts at the Congress to abolish the slave-trade.]
Among the subjects which were pressed upon the Congress of Vienna there was one in which the pursuit of national interests and calculations of policy bore no part, the abolition of the African slave-trade. The British people, who, after twenty years of combat in the cause of Europe, had earned so good a right to ask something of their allies, probably attached a deeper importance to this question than to any in the whole range of European affairs, with the single exception of the personal overthrow of Napoleon. Since the triumph of Wiberforce's cause in the Parliament of 1807, and the extinction of English slave-traffic, the anger with which the nation viewed this detestable cruelty, too long tolerated by itself, had become more and more vehement and widespread. By the year 1814 the utterances of public opinion were so loud and urgent that the Government, though free from enthusiasm itself, was forced to place the international prohibition of the slave-trade in the front rank of its demands. There were politicians on the Continent credulous enough to believe that this outcry of the heart and the conscience of the nation was but a piece of commercial hypocrisy. Talleyrand, with far different insight, but not with more sympathy, spoke of the state of the English people as one of frenzy.