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fortresses, and the means of war and annoyance. Prussia desired to introduce into the treaty a clause, according large pecuniary indemnity to itself. This, however, against which the impoverished Government of France rebelled, was at last set aside by the allies.

In the first days of June, the King opened the chambers by announcing the charter, "which of his free will and royal authority he granted to his subjects." With the exception of this ungracious exordium, the charter was even more liberal and far more explicit in its liberalism than the constitution prepared by the senate. It declared all Frenchmen equal before the law, whatever their rank or title. It declared the national property, meaning that of the nobles and clergy, sold by the State, to be inviolable.* It abolished the conscription, and promised liberty of opinion and of the press. Whilst it held forth equal liberty and protection to all forms of worship, it, however, declared the Roman Catholic religion to be that of the State. The peerage was to be hereditary, its members named by the King, without limitation of number. To be an elector required the payment of 300 francs direct taxes. Whilst such fair promises and declarations were made by the King, the Royalists kept no secret of their considering it all a sham. "The ministers," says Madame de Staël, "spoke in public of the charter with the greatest respect, even whilst proposing measures that destroyed it bit by bit. In private, they laughed at the very name, and treated the rights of nations as a capital joke."

It was soon shown indeed what the ruling party meant by religious liberty when the princes refused to receive the constitutional prelates, and the Government demanded of the Pope the abrogation of the concordat. The laxity of the times had introduced a complete nonobservance of the Sunday. To have gradually restored

For the difficulty of passing' them through the commission, see Beugnot, who records at length the

discussion in the committee of the
chamber.

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CHAP. the sanctity of the day would have been desirable. But to compel it by an order of the police was certainly unwise. The popular outcry was against nobles and priests. To display a government influenced by both was most unpolitic. Yet this the Bourbon family took care to do. A celebrated actress, Mdlle. de Raucourt, dying at the time, the parish clergy refused the rights of sepulture, on which the mob broke into the church of St. Roch, and were about to renew some of the bad scenes of the revolution, when Louis the Eighteenth sent counter-orders to the ecclesiastical authorities. In the lower chamber, a Royalist made a motion in direct opposition to that clause of the charter, which declared the revolutionary purchases of emigrant property indefeasible. The more furious Royalists were for annulling the sales, the moderate for rendering them sufficiently insecure to force the new proprietors to compromise with the old.

The Bourbons thus alienated the non-military portion of the nation. As to the military, they could but render their natural aversion doubly intense. The monarch's young garde-du-corps and military household filled the capital with gay uniforms, whilst the veterans of the empire on half-pay crowded the streets and cafés, and insulted their rivals. The imperial legislation in favour of the army was abrogated in all essential parts, the endowments of the Legion of Honour curtailed, the schools for the sons and daughters of the military suppressed. Popular generals were disgraced and punished. Ney had withdrawn to the country. Davoust and Vandamme were persecuted. Excelmans was accused as a spy, and brought to trial, merely because he had written a friendly letter to Murat. Soult, ready to flatter any prince that was uppermost, had been made war minister, and he it was who ordered Excelmans to be tried, which did not save him from being himself suspected at court. The state of the army indeed and

its opinions were such that a military insurrection against the Bourbons was inevitable, even if Napoleon had not reappeared to head it.

Had the allies conquered that Emperor in the field, and reduced him to abdication as the consequence of defeat, the minds of the soldiers might have been more resigned. But when the latter result was known to have been obtained by treachery, such as that which Marmont employed, both to his master and to his troops, the imperial soldiers demurred against the decree. The Bourbons had been enthroned, they said, by a trick, and another appeal to arms was considered but justice. Napoleon, in his not remote island, was soon informed of the feelings of the army, and of the simultaneous discontent of every class of the population interested morally or materially in the changes wrought by the revolution. To himself and his family personally, the Bourbons behaved with rancour, not generosity. Perhaps to him, who had sacrificed the Duke d'Enghien, this was natural. But they should have been just. By the treaty concluded at Fontainebleau, Napoleon, as a return for his abdication, was to be paid 80,000l. a year to himself, as much more to his family, and certain sums to his chief officers. He left treasure, the fruits of his savings, to that amount. None of these stipulations were observed. Jerome's wife, a noble-minded woman, who resisted all the efforts of her family, of the house of Würtemberg, to separate her from her husband, was arrested and robbed of her jewels by a Royalist emissary. At Vienna, the French plenipotentiaries urged the necessity of breaking through the treaty of Fontainebleau, and removing Napoleon to the Azores, or some distant part of the world, a proposal which Alexander would not listen to. Napoleon, in short, was bound by no engagement towards the existing rulers of France, who observed no engagement towards him.

Romancer has never penned scenes or character to

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CHAP. rival in interest those of Napoleon, and of his life. What drama could be compared to that of Fontainebleau, when the Emperor, assailed by his marshals, and afterwards betrayed by one, was compelled to give up his sword? Who has not read the account of his last review in the palace court, his embracing the eagles, his touching farewell? Yet, whilst worshipped by his soldiers, he was abhorred by several of the populations of the south, who received him with imprecations, and even sought his life. He well knew that southern race, which was his own, and such knowledge contributed not a little to his contempt of mankind. At Elba, with his thousand men, his war sloop and brig, denied his annuity, and threatened in his person, what could he do else than meditate his return, and at last risk it? That his doing so was the result of any conspiracy has been sufficiently disproved. M. Fleury de Chaboulon came to him from the Duke de Bassano, with merely an account of the state of public feeling and public affairs in Paris. This was quite sufficient. And in the night of the 25th of February, 1815, Napoleon set sail with 1,100 men to invade France, and, on the 1st of March, landed in the Gulf of Juan, a short distance westward of Antibes.

When tidings of this extraordinary event reached the potentates and plenipotentiaries still assembled in congress at Vienna, their first impulse was to laugh outright. This was soon changed into a curse of indignation and affright. And they gave vent to their passion by proclaiming that not only would they not treat with Napoleon, but, in revolutionary style, they declared him hors la loi, a caitiff to strike down whom was the duty of every well-thinking man. And yet the potentates at Vienna had been each playing Napoleon in his way, carving out empires for themselves, caring little for the rights or feelings of the rest of the world. Alexander said he should have all Poland; Prussia, all

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Saxony; Austria, Italy and the Tyrol. England was СПАР. especially bent upon amalgamating Belgium and Holland into one kingdom. This, the French allege very unjustly, was taking them to herself. Lord Castlereagh objected to Prussia absorbing Saxony, and Russia having all Poland, for no very good reason, save that Austria disliked this aggrandisement of its rivals and neighbours. But England had not a word to say against Austria's monopoly of Italy. It might have been wise of England to have favoured the extension of Prussia to the magnitude of a first-rate power. And it was, after all, better for the future prospects of Poland to hand it over as a whole to Russia, which promised it quasi independence, and a constitution, than to aid in the destruction of its nationality by continuing to parcel it. England, however, adhered to Austria, and, strange to say, joined it in a triple alliance with France for the preservation of Saxony and Poland. This separation of the allies was considered a great triumph on the part of Prince Talleyrand, and triumph it might have been, had any advantage accrued to France. But that was not apparent. Prince Talleyrand, at Vienna, could scarcely be considered the representative of France. He merely represented the Bourbons, and their petty passions. To overthrow Murat, because of his alliance with the Buonapartes, and to uphold the King of Saxony, because of the relationship of Louis the Eighteenth to the court of Saxony, composed all Prince Talleyrand's cares and duties. And in furtherance of this, he joined England and Austria so far as to threaten war, and augment the French army, thus relapsing into the policy of Napoleon, whose hopes and interests were thereby materially served. These squabbles of congress were at once quieted by the return of Napoleon, at whose reappearance the Powers and their representatives forgot their disputes, and, linking once more their hands and fortunes, reproduced and revived the treaty of

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