Lyons was a town in which there could not but be much disaffection. To entice or provoke foolish people to rush into acts of sedition was an easy task to the police. And this they executed, to the great delight of the prefect and the general, both ultra-Royalists, who hoped to show their zeal and obtain honour by enacting at Lyons the tragedy of Grenoble. An officer, who acted decoy and informer, was shot on leaving the general's quarters. This was enough for the latter to consider it conspiracy. In consequence, some 500 persons were arrested, and 28 were condemned and executed. The Commissary of Police, in the meantime, had communicated to M. Decazes that there had been no plot, save in the brains of the commander and the prefect. Marmont was sent down to see into the matter, and his report was to the same effect. His aide-de-camp, Fabvier, published the circumstances, and shed shame and disgrace upon the Royalist functionaries, as sanguinary as they were incapable.

It was then felt impossible to maintain the prevotal courts which had caused this innocent blood to be spilt, and it became necessary to have judges and commanders chosen in a more just and liberal spirit. M. d'Ambray was in consequence dismissed from the department of justice, and was succeeded by Pasquier. Molé became marine minister. The Duke of Feltre was superseded at the war office by Marshal Gouvion de St.-Cyr.

The latter instantly set about proposing a law for the reorganisation of the army, which was become necessary, as the allies had agreed to withdraw their forces of occupation. Moreover, it was also necessary to reverse the attempts of the Count d'Artois and Clark to form gradually an exclusively Royalist or Vendean army. Had this been accomplished, it would have been unpopular and odious to the country, and instead of providing the means to keep down discord and disorder, it would have

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CHAP. produced the state of things most apt to provoke them. Gouvion St.-Cyr, a more liberal war minister, replaced the army very much on its old footing, and re-established the conscription. The Royalists opposed it, and Villèle proposed in its place the recurrence to voluntary enlistment for the line, a militia being organised at the same time. Had this not meant the enrolment of ultra-Royalists alone, it might have been worthy of consideration for the small army which the Restoration proposed to keep up. Under Napoleon, the conscription, severe as it was, had its compensation; it rendered the army a kind of corporation endowed with large revenues and dotations from conquered lands. The prospect of sharing such emoluments reconciled the recruit to the ranks and to the privations of the lower grades. This, however, had vanished. And although one-third of the advancement was preserved to men from the ranks, yet these became officers so late in life, whilst the youths from the schools had the start of them, that the higher grades of the army were in reality only open to men of fortune and education.

The promotion of the common soldier being thus a delusion, the evil of taking so large a portion of the population from the pursuits of industry was but too evident. The conscription is the great check to population, prohibiting marriage before the age of 27, and generalising the habits of camps and barracks in lieu of those of domestic life. But if one nation is to enrol and equip its entire population, its neighbours in self-defence must do the same. Supported by the feeling of the nation in this respect, and impelled by the Liberal party, which wanted to obliterate the reactionary administration of the Duke de Feltre, Marshal St.-Cyr passed his law of recruitment and army organisation through the two chambers.

A certain liberty of the press was another concession, which M. Decazes deemed it necessary to make to the

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growing strength of the Liberals. The authorisation of CHAP. Government being necessary for the establishment of a new journal, and the censorship still weighing on the old, the daily press was severely restricted. This had driven writers to more serious and lasting publications, to books and pamphlets, and to periodicals in which bold and well-digested reasoning came forth at stated intervals. The Minerve and Conservateur were the Liberal and Royalist organs, both of them able, and both of them attacking and vilipending the Government, that took up its position between them. If the conscription was little to the taste of the Royalists, St.-Cyr's proposal, to organise the old Imperial veterans as a reserve, was still less so. But they wanted such a France as did not exist, and could not be made to exist. And St.-Cyr's law passed. The Government, whilst abolishing the censorship, prepared to subject them to certain measures of precaution. Liberal and Royalist both exclaimed. Villèle demanded the adjunction of a jury composed of the highest tax-payers, as the only tribunal of the press. The Doctrinaires, as the more philosophic of the Liberals were called, strenuously opposed. Camille Jordan and Royer-Collard objected to the seizure of works in the hands of the printer. Ministers felt ashamed of their Royalist allies when these introduced a clause extending penalty and prohibition to old authors, and thus proscribing the works of Voltaire and Rousseau. In disgust at the extravagance, the chamber of peers rejected the law altogether.

What chiefly gave the Cabinet power to resist such defection of the Liberals, joined to the increasing acrimony of the Royalists, was the knowledge that the Duke of Richelieu possessed the confidence and approbation of the allied powers. Both the Emperor of Russia and the English Tory leaders dreaded the Count d'Artois, who was animated with all the spirit of the last Stuarts, and who was taking the evident path to a

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catastrophe similar to theirs. The Emperor Alexander, in a visit to Louis the Eighteenth, fully expressed his sanction of the King's policy and of the attitude of the Duke of Richelieu and Decazes. His conversation was indeed like his character, mystic and wavering, but for the moment it was warmly expressed. They therefore besought his powerful protection to lighten the sore burdens of military occupation. He persuaded the plenipotentiaries of the allied powers to meet at Aix-la-Chapelle to take this French demand into consideration. When the occupation of France had been settled in. 1815, it was admitted that this occupation should endure for five years, if necessary, but might under favourable circumstances be limited to three. Notwithstanding the large amount paid, the demands of the allies exceeded a milliard and a half of francs. This was reduced to 320 millions of francs, and covered by a loan, adding seventeen millions annual interest to the French debt. The 5 per cent. was then at 78 francs. Thus provided, the Duke of Richelieu went to Aix, when great was his astonishment and indignation to find that the ultra-Royalists had forwarded a secret note, deprecating the withdrawal of the allied forces, and representing the country as relapsing into the hands of the chiefs of the revolution from the liberalism of the Duke of Richelieu and M. Decazes.

Despite of such intermeddling, the Duke of Richelieu obtained at Aix the speedy evacuation of the French territory. The continental sovereigns were all in want of money. And the Duke of Wellington, though in the enjoyment of high position and emolument as commander-in-chief of the occupying armies, still did his utmost to put an end to a state of things so galling and onerous to France. The historian Capefigue, the confidant of M. Decazes, does full justice to the disinterestedness and liberal conduct of the English Duke, who had throughout been most conservative of French

interests and French pride, notwithstanding the arm of CHAP. the assassin having been raised against him.

Although the note and remonstrance of the ultraRoyalists, deprecating the sudden and fatal withdrawal of the allied troops, did not prevent the sovereigns from fulfilling their promise to the Duke of Richelieu, and acquiescing in the arrangements for the evacuation of the French territory, still it rendered them more alive to the resuscitation of the Liberal or, as some considered, the Imperialist and Revolutionary party. French elections took place at this period of 1817, during which Alexander and the King of Prussia paid a short visit to Paris. But when the result of the elections, and especially the return of Benjamin Constant for Paris, was made known at Aix, the foreign monarchs and diplomatists showed misgivings. The unfortunate nervousness of French statesmen and parties at the least rise or augmentation of power in one or other party has been mentioned. But the allied sovereigns, and even English ministers, were quite as nervous, showing alarm one day at ultra-Royalism, the next at ultra-Liberalism, and driving the French king and his counsellors to and fro, as if the State were a ship whose helm was to be put about at every swelling of the wind. The Duke of Richelieu was as little experienced in constitutional government as the Czar, and when the latter evinced some misgivings, the Duke felt himself bound to do the same. So because one or two Liberals had been elected in the capital, the Duke promised his great patron and diplomatic friends to set about changing the law of election. The Duke's intention was soon known to the Royalists, who promised him every support. This kind of accord took place without the Duke informing either the King or M. Decazes. In England we should call this treachery, in the Duke it was political ignorance. M. Decazes, however, got wind of it, and hastened to offer his resignation as minister of police.

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