The ink was hardly dry upon the Charter before Louis XVIII. began to break its conditions. It had served its purpose, he had ridden into office upon it: what further use had he for it? Why should he trammel his actions by treaty when the other kings of Europe were freeing themselves from such fetters? To the south of him was Spain, where the liberals had framed a constitution which Ferdinand, released by Napoleon early in 1814, had sworn to respect, and which he had set aside the moment he had taken again into his hands the reins of power. Instead of reform and limited monarchy on the peninsula, there was now a full restoration of the Old Order, feudalism, tithes, local tyrannies, clerical and royal absolutism, the jails full of democrats, and the Inquisition hungry for heretics. Nobles and priests struck their ancient bargain, mastered a willing king, and with the resistless strength of self-interest, class-prejudice, and corporate unity of purpose, acting upon the ignorance, the superstition, and the cultivated hatreds of the people, carried Spain back with a rush to the good old times of Bourbon and Roman absolutism.

Not only in the south was counter-revolution triumphant; in the north it was equally so. In Jerome Bonaparte’s kingdom of Westphalia, where the people had driven out the system of Napoleon, and called in their former rulers, old laws and customs rattled back to their rusty grooves; the Code NapolÉon vanished; equality of civil right was seen no more, feudalism fell like a chain upon the astounded peasant, purchasers of state lands were ousted without compensation, special privilege and tax exemptions again gladdened the elect, aristocracy and clericalism swept away every vestige of Jerome’s brief rule, the torture chamber again rang with the shrieks of victims, and the punishment of death by breaking upon the wheel emphasized the desperate efforts nobles and priests were making to stem the torrent of modern liberalism.

And the Holy Father at Rome, loosed by Napoleon from Fontainebleau at about the same time that Ferdinand of Spain had been released from ValenÇay, had wended his way back to Italy as Ferdinand had to Spain, and, seated again in St. Peter’s chair, had laid his pious hands to the same work in Rome which Ferdinand was busy with in Madrid.

With absolutism and feudalism triumphing all around him, why should not Louis XVIII. follow the glorious examples? Did he not owe it to God and the ancient Bourbon kings to cast out from France the devil of democracy which had rended her, and to clothe her once more in her right mind—in the docile obedience to kingly word and clerical admonition? Apparently he did; and apparently he believed that the quicker he set about it the better.

He had guaranteed freedom of the press in his Charter; but this was a promise he could not venture to keep. He meant to violate the Charter and to restore the Old Order; and he knew that this could not be done if the press remained free. He had lived in England where he may have heard Richard Brinsley Sheridan when he thrilled the House of Commons with that famous burst of eloquence, “Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give them a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling Court, and let me have but an unfettered Press, I will defy them to encroach a hair’s-breadth upon the liberties of England!” Therefore, one of his first acts was to gag the press with a censorship. With indecent haste, this royal ordinance breaching the Charter was published just six days after the official publication of the Charter itself.

Unbridled criticism by those organs which in our modern system control public opinion being thus made impossible, other measures of similar tendency followed swiftly.

Loudly condemning Napoleon’s toleration of heretics, Jews, and non-believers, the clericals induced the King to compel Frenchmen of all creeds and races to suspend business not only on the Christian Sabbath, but on the festival days of the Catholic Church.

Not satisfied with a grand religious ceremony to “purify” the spot upon which Louis XVI. had been guillotined, nor with having dug up bones supposed to be his and given them magnificent sepulture, Louis solemnly devoted France to the Virgin Mary, and her image was borne through the streets in formal procession, wherein the great dignitaries ambled along with lighted candles in their hands.

By the Charter, the army had been specially protected. Napoleon’s soldiers still had guns in their hands and rage in their hearts when Talleyrand was writing out the pledges with which the returning Bourbons were to be fettered. It was highly important to soothe these troops, or to remove their fear that the Bourbons would deal with them unjustly. Hence the sixty-ninth article of the Charter, which declared that soldiers in active service, the officers and soldiers in retreat, the widows, the officers and soldiers on the pension list, should preserve their rank, honors, and pensions.

By royal ordinance (December 16, 1814) this clause of the Charter was violated.

Fourteen thousand officers and sergeants were dismissed on half-pay; and the places of these battle-scarred heroes of the Empire were filled by five thousand nobles who had never seen service save with the enemies of France. Naval officers who had deserted the ships of their own country, and had served against their native land, were put back into the French navy, and given the rank they had won abroad. Veterans who had fought for the French Republic and the French Empire, from Valmy and Jemappes to Laon and Montmirail, found themselves officered by insolent little noblemen who had never smelt gunpowder. General Dupont, known principally for his capitulation at Baylen, was made minister of war. The tricolor flag which French soldiers had borne victoriously into every capital on the Continent was put away. Many of the bullet-shredded banners were destroyed—they and their splendid memories being hateful to the Bourbon soul.

The white flag of the old monarchy—a flag which living French soldiers knew only as the rallying-point of treason and rebellion in La VendÉe—was made the national standard. The numbers of the regiments were changed, and the veterans of a dozen historic campaigns lost the names by which they were known, and which they had made glorious in the arduous test of battle. The Imperial Guard was banished from Paris; the Swiss were again enrolled to defend the palace, and clad in the uniform of 1792; a Bourbon military household was organized, filled with young nobles who had never fired a shot, who were paid fancy salaries, and decked out in a livery which made all Paris titter. To complete the burlesque, they resurrected and made chief officer of the palace the old Marquis of Chansenets, who had been Governor of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, and had escaped massacre that day by hiding under piles of dead.

The young Bourbon dukes, Berry and AngoulÊme, knew nothing whatever of war, practically or otherwise; yet they were put in highest military command; and they gave themselves airs which neither Wellington, BlÜcher, or Napoleon ever assumed. These young princes of the blood-royal told French veterans on parade that their twenty years of service under the Republic and under the Empire were but twenty years of brigandage. When Napoleon’s Old Guard failed to manoeuvre as the youthful Duke of AngoulÊme would have them do, they were sneeringly advised to go to England to learn their drill. Does a colonel so displease the Duke of Berry that he must be cashiered, disgraced? The haughty Bourbon tears off the epaulets with his own hand! At another time the same doughty warrior strikes a soldier on parade. Word goes out that a monument is to be raised to the invading ÉmigrÉs whom English vessels had landed at Quiberon in 1795, and whom the republicans had slaughtered there. Honors to these being granted, Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal were not forgotten. Their names were mentioned with honor, masses recited for the repose of their souls, and a patent of nobility granted to Cadoudal’s family.

By the Charter, laws were to be made by king, peers, and deputies acting together. In actual practice the King made his own laws. From the mouths of such men as LainÉ, whom Napoleon had thoroughly understood and denounced, the gospel of non-resistance was heard in all its ancient simplicity, “If the King wills it, the law wills it.”

Incredible as it may seem, the members of the old Parliament of Paris met at a private house, and drew up a protest against the Charter. With one accord nobles and priests began to speak of the return of feudalism, of seignorial rights, of tithes, of benefices, of exclusive chase, and of the confiscated lands. The clergy of Paris, in their address to the King (August, 1814), expressed their earnest desire for the restoration of “that old France, in which were intermingled, without distinction, in every heart, those two sacred names,—God and King.”

At least one sermon was preached in which those citizens who did not restore to the nobles and the Church the lands which the Revolution had taken away were threatened with the doom of Jezebel—and they should be devoured by dogs. Three hundred petitions were found at one time lying upon the table of the Bourbon minister of the interior, sent there by distressed Catholics who declared that their priests refused them absolution on account of their being owners of national properties. To the trembling devotee, the poor slave of superstition, the priest said, “Surrender to Church and nobles the land you bought and paid for, else the gates of heaven shall remain shut to you!” Under the spell of clerical duress many a middle-class and peasant proprietor swapped good land for a verbal free passage to the new Jerusalem. Many nobles, imitating a king who had mentally abolished all changes since 1789, began to claim forgotten dues and to exercise offensive feudal privileges. The Duke of Wellington himself acted the grand seigneur of the Old RÉgime; and with a cavalcade of friends and a pack of hounds went charging at his pleasure over the crops of the farmers around Paris, trampling their young grain with serene disregard of peasant rights. These nobles of old France, who had fled from the dangers of the Revolution, and who had been restored by Napoleon, or by foreign bayonets, were as proud, as intolerant, as though they had accomplished the Bourbon restoration by themselves. They regarded the nobles of Napoleon’s creation with unconcealed contempt. The wives of men whose fathers had been ennobled for shady services to shadier Bourbon kings, looked with lofty scorn upon the ladies of such men as Marshal Ney, whom Napoleon had ennobled for service as gallant as any soldier ever rendered to France. To mark beyond all mistake the dividing line between the old nobility and the new, the military schools were reËstablished, in which a hundred years of nobility were necessary for admission—another violation of the Charter.

Louis XVIII. was not devoid of talent, nor of worldly wisdom; but he was not the man to contrast favorably with Napoleon. It was his misfortune to be personally repulsive. Like his brother, Louis XVI. he was swinish in tastes and habits. So fat that he could not mount a horse, so unwieldy that he could only waddle about in velvet gaiters, he was no man’s hero—nor woman’s either. Those who loved the ancient system were compelled to use him, not because they loved him, but because they adored the system.

Gifted with small talent for governing, how could he bring order out of the chaos Napoleon’s fall had left? How could he reconcile the intemperate greed of the partisans of the Old Order with the advocates of liberal ideas in France? How could he harmonize emancipated peasants with lords of Church and State who were clamorous to reËnslave them? How could he restore prosperity to the French manufacturer suddenly ruined by the flood of English goods, which flood Napoleon had so long dammed with his Continental system? And when the curÉ of St. Roch refused holy burial to an actress, how could the feeble Louis control either arrogant priest or indignant, riotous friends of the actress? And how could he prevent all France from remembering that once before when this same priest had refused Christian burial to an opera dancer, the iron hand of Napoleon Bonaparte had fallen upon the unchristian curÉ, inflicting chastisement, and the reproof that “Jesus Christ commanded us to pray even for our enemies”?

No wonder, then, that when Carnot published a memorial, arraigning the government for its breaches of faith, and pointing out its rapid progress to absolutism, the book had a vast circulation. Chateaubriand was brought forward to write a reply, and he wrote it; but even Chateaubriand could not slay facts with a pen, though the courtiers at the palace seem to have believed that he had done so. Such was the Bourbon restoration. Undoing much of the work of the Revolution, it menaced all. Apparently it was only a question of time when France would be clothed again in the political and religious garb of 1789. Those who had flattered themselves that they were getting constitutional monarchy in exchange of Napoleon’s despotism, soon realized that the Bourbon system had most of Napoleon’s vices and none of his virtues. Talleyrand, FouchÉ, and Company had expected to rule the kingdom as constitutional ministers. They found that their influence was nothing when opposed by such royalist courtiers as the empty-headed Blacas. Three months did not elapse after Talleyrand and FouchÉ had plotted the downfall of Napoleon before they were plotting the overthrow of Louis XVIII.

At length the Congress of Nations assembled at Vienna (September, 1814), and a very grand gathering of notabilities it was. The Czar of Russia, the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and WÜrtemberg, the Emperor Francis of Austria, were present in person; the kings of England and France were represented by Lord Castlereagh and Prince Talleyrand, respectively; Saxony, Naples, and other small states were represented by delegations more or less official, and more or less recognized.

Statesmen of many countries, diplomats, envoys, agents, male and female, attended in great numbers; and in fÊtes, banquets, balls, excursions, and miscellaneous amusements some $50,000 each day were gayly consumed.

Faithless in their dealings with Napoleon, the allied kings had been distrustful of each other; behind public treaties secret agreements had lurked, and now at the Congress of Vienna these underhand dealings began to crop out. Ostensibly Napoleon had been overthrown by a grand, brotherly coÖperation of all the European monarchs. Ostensibly the motive of this grand, brotherly coÖperation had been to liberate the people of Europe from the grinding tyranny of Napoleonic government.

No sooner had eminently wise heads begun to wag at this congress, loosening eminently sage tongues, than it appeared that Russia, Prussia, Austria, and England had made a secret bargain, quite a while ago, to divide at their own pleasure the territories of which they had stripped the too ambitious Emperor of the French. Consequently, the representatives of these four Christian powers began to hold little meetings of their own, to readjust the map of Europe, shutting the door in the face of the eminent Talleyrand and lesser lights who had come there to wield influence on a variety of subjects. This concert of the four Christian powers, to the utter ignoring of other powers, likewise Christian, would have resulted in a new map of Europe, just suited to their own views but for one thing. In reaching their secret agreement to shut out the other powers, they had failed to come to an agreement among themselves.

If four royal and Christian victors secretly agree to monopolize the spoils, it is obviously of the utmost importance that they should not fall out while dividing the loot. Russia, Austria, Prussia, and England were in harmony so far as agreeing that those four should take everything which Napoleon had lost; but the Congress of Vienna had barely passed the stage of mutual congratulations, and a solemn return of thanks to God, before the row between the four robber powers began. The Czar demanded all of Poland; Prussia all of Saxony; Austria’s eager eyes were fixed upon Italy, and England stiffened her grip on colonies generally.

A great deal has been said in praise of the masterly manner in which Talleyrand forced open the door, and led France again to the council board of nations. His boasted diplomacy seems to have amounted to no more than this: the four powers mentioned quarrelled among themselves, and France found her opportunity to take sides. Talleyrand made good the opening thus offered, but surely he was not the only Frenchman who could have done so. France had not been obliterated: she was still the France of 1792, which had successfully resisted all Europe. If the four great powers found themselves about to fight, two against two, was it owing to Talleyrand’s genius alone that France was courted by one party to the feud? Surely not. It was owing to the greatness of France—not the greatness of Talleyrand.

Louis XVIII. could have brought into the field not only the remnants of Napoleon’s army in the late campaign, but also the army with which Soult had fought Wellington, as well as the troops which the Treaty of Paris had released from northern prisons and garrison towns.

In a war which enlisted the support of the French people, half a million men could easily have been armed; hence we can readily understand why Austria and England, enraged by the greed of Russia and Prussia, signed a secret treaty with France in January 1815.

However, the spirit of compromise worked with the Congress of Vienna; and to avoid such a dreadful war as was on the eve of breaking out among the allied kings, the Czar was allowed to take nearly all of Poland; and Prussia had her way with Saxony; for while they gave her only half of Saxony itself, they made up for the other half by giving her more than an equivalent on the Rhine.

Juggling with the doctrine of “legitimacy,” and claiming that all thrones must be restored to princes who were rulers “by the grace of God,” and not by the choice of the people, Talleyrand seems to have brought the powers to agree that Murat should be ousted from Naples, and the Bourbons restored. Bernadotte could not be treated likewise, because he was the adopted son of the legitimate King of Sweden!

He was not only confirmed in his high office, but the English fleet had been sent to aid him in seizing the prey which had been promised him as the price of his waging war upon his mother-country. Norway, which Napoleon had refused to promise him, and which the Czar had promised, was torn from Denmark by force, and handed over to Sweden, in spite of all the Norwegians themselves could do.

Informed of all that was passing in France, in Italy, and at the Vienna Congress, Napoleon prepared to make a bold dash for his throne. He communicated secretly with Murat, with various Italian friends, with various friends in France. Vague rumors began to circulate among his old soldiers that he would reappear in the spring.

Did he make a secret treaty with Austria, detaching her from the European alliance? There is some reason to believe that he did. He repeatedly declared at St. Helena that such a treaty had been made; and the author of the Private Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII. corroborates him. In that curious, interesting book a copy of the alleged treaty is given.

Napoleon himself is reported to have said that the conspiracy which FouchÉ had been organizing among the army officers forced him to leave Elba three months earlier than he had intended. This is important, if true, for it is conceded that had he waited three months longer his chances of success would have been immensely improved—provided that he had not in the meantime been seized as a prisoner of war or assassinated.

Concealing his design to the last moment, Napoleon gathered up his little army of eleven hundred men, went on board a small flotilla at Porto Ferrajo, February 15, 1815, and set sail for France. His mother and his sister looked on in tears while the troops were embarking, and the Emperor himself was deeply affected. As he embraced his mother and bade her farewell, he said, “I must go now, or I shall never go.”

At the Tuileries on the night of March 2, 1815, a curious scene was witnessed in the saloon of the AbbÉ d’AndrÉ, director-general of the royal police.

Quite a number of people being present, conversation fell upon certain ugly rumors concerning Elba. A gentleman just from Italy spoke of the active movements of Napoleon’s agents. It was said that the Emperor was engaged in some hostile preparations. The gentleman from Italy evidently made an impression upon the company, and created a feeling of uneasiness. The mere thought of Napoleon Bonaparte breaking loose from Elba, and landing in France, was enough of itself to materially increase the chilliness of a night in March to the Bourbon group.

But the AbbÉ d’AndrÉ was equal to the emergency. As director-general of police it was his business to know what Napoleon was doing, and he knew.

Rising from his chair, and striding to the fireplace, he faced the company, and harangued them thus:—

“It is certainly a very extraordinary thing that right-thinking people should be the first to find fault with the government. For heaven’s sake, ladies and gentlemen, do give the ministers credit for common sense! If you think them indifferent to passing events, you are strangely mistaken. They watch everything, see everything, and take precautions against everything. Do not be alarmed about Elba. Every step Bonaparte takes is carefully noted. Elba is surrounded by numerous cruisers. All who come and all who go are carefully examined. Government receives a daily report of all that takes place there. Now, to convince you that your alarms are silly, I will read you the report we received yesterday.”

With this the complacent police minister drew from his pocket the official bulletin, and read it. His agent represented that Napoleon was reduced to a very low state of health, that he had the scurvy, and was assailed by the infirmities of premature old age; that he rarely went out, and that he would sometimes be seen on the seashore amusing himself by tossing pebbles into the sea—a sure sign of approaching lunacy. And so forth.

Having read this valuable report, d’AndrÉ looked down upon his auditors with a glance of triumph. He had demonstrated to his complete satisfaction that Napoleon was not only in Elba, but that he was pitching idle pebbles into a listless sea, and was on the direct route to the lunatic asylum.

This was March 2; on the day previous Napoleon had landed at Cannes, and was marching upon Paris!

The shock which Europe felt when the signal telegraph flashed the news that the lion was loose again, was such as Europe had probably never felt before, and will probably never feel again. It paralyzed the King and the court at the Tuileries; it created consternation among the kings and statesmen at the Congress of Vienna. The royalist lady who wrote the Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII., declares that the King’s ministers looked like men who had seen a ghost. They were frightened into such imbecility that they were incapable of forming any plan or giving any sane advice.

On the other hand, Wellington’s belief was that Napoleon had acted on false information, and that the King would “destroy him without difficulty, and in a short time.”

How Wellington ever managed to conjure up the mental picture of Napoleon being destroyed by Louis XVIII. is one of the psychological mysteries.

The man who, of all men, best knew that Louis XVIII. could never stand his ground against Napoleon was Louis himself; and he began to arrange to go out at one gate while Napoleon came in at the other. Proclamations he issued, but no man read them. A price he set on Napoleon’s head, but no man was eager to earn it. Generals and troops he sent to stop the daring intruder, but the troops cried “Live the Emperor!” and the officers had to flee, or join the Napoleonic procession. The Duchess of AngoulÊme, daughter of Louis XVI., exhorted the soldiers at Bordeaux, but even her appeals fell flat. The Count of Artois and Marshal Macdonald were equally unsuccessful at Lyons; their troops deserted them, and they were forced to gallop away. Marshal Ney was quite sure that he could manage the soldiers committed to him, and that he could cage the monster from Elba. Pledging his word to the quaking King, he set forth upon his errand, drew up his troops, harangued them, and proposed the capture of Napoleon. They laughed at him, drowned his voice in cries of “Live the Emperor!” and the inconstant Ney fell into the current, surrendered to his men, proclaimed his adherence to the man he had been sent to capture, and went in person to lay his offer of service at the feet of his old master!

Sadly Louis XVIII. turned to Blacas upon whom he had too trustfully leaned for guidance and counsel. “Blacas, you are a good fellow, but I was grievously deceived when I mistook your devotedness for talent.” With nobody to fight for him, it was time he was leaving; and on the night of March 19 he left. With him on his doleful way to the frontier went a terror-stricken renegade, who dreaded of all things that Napoleon should lay hands upon him,—Marmont, the Arnold of France.