Duke of Orleans, requiring him, in the character of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, conferred on him by the revolutionary authorities at Paris, and confirmed by the King by royal appointment, to proclaim the accession of Henry V. to the throne, authorizing him at the same time to administer the government during his minority. Here, then, again the path of honor and duty was opened to the Duke of Orleans; but he again declined to follow it, and, instead of obeying the royal mandate, and issuing the proclamation required of him, he made every preparation for resistance. At the same time, however, with detestable hypocrisy, he wrote a letter to Charles X. in answer, so respectful and affectionate that it entirely disarmed the suspicions of the falling monarch.* An army, composed of twelve or fifteen thousand men, hastily got together and half-armed, was directed to march out of Paris on Rambouillet, and Messieurs Schonen and Odillon Barrott and Marshal Maison were sent forward as a deputation to impress upon the 2 Lam. viii. 382, 388; Cap. King the necessity of an immediii. 209, 210; ate and unqualified resignation Ann. Hist. xiii. for himself and his descendants, 189; Moniteur, Aug. 2, 1830; and every preparation was made Louis Blanc, i. to compel his embarkation for En374, 375. gland.

92.

Revolutionary army which set out from

The cortège of the revolutionary forces set out from Paris on the 3d August; it was deemed at the time no slight stroke of policy, on the part of the revolutionary chiefs, that they sucParis for Ram- ceeded, on this pretext, in getting bouillet. rid of twelve or fourteen thousand unruly defenders, who, whatever they might be to their opponents, were unquestionably most formidable to their own government. Variously armed with muskets, sabres, pistols, pikes, iron bars, and fowling-pieces, the motley assemblage were conveyed, for the most part in omnibuses and cabriolets toward Rambouillet. pour régler la forme du gouvernement pendant la minorité du nouveau roi: ici je me borne à faire connaître ces dispositions; c'est un moyen d'éviter bien des maux. Vous communiquerez mes intentions au corps diplomatique, et vous me ferez connaitre le plutôt possible la proclamation par laquelle mon petit-fils sera reconnu Roi sous le nom de Henri V.-CHARLES."-Annuaire Historique, xiii. 188, 189. CAPE-FIGUE, ii. 211, note.

"M. Dupin conseilla au Prince de faire au message de Charles X. une réponse catégorique, et propre à sépala branche aînée. Il alla jusqu'à se charger de la rédaction de cette réponse. La lettre qu'il écrivit était rude et sans pitié. Le Duc de Orléans la lut, et dit, 'Ceci est trop grave pour que je ne consulte pas ma femme. II passe dans une pièce voisine, et reparaît quelques instants après, tenant à la main la même enveloppe, qui fut remise à l'envoyé de Charles X. La lettre, que cette enveloppe contenait, émut doucement le vieux monarque; elle était affectueuse et pleine de témoignages de fidélité. Charles en fut si touché que, dès ce moment, toutes ses hésitations s'évanouirent. Charles X. n'avait jamais eu pour le Duc d'Orléans la même répugnance que beaucoup d'hommes de la Cour. Il en avait donné récemment une preuve éclatante en ordonnant au Général Trogof de confisquer tous les exemplaires des Mémoires de Maria Stella, libelle dirigé contre le Duc d'Orleans, et que les courtisans faisaient circuler à Saint-Cloud avec une joie maligne. Il fut donc charmé de trouver dans ce Prince le Protecteur de son petit-fils; et convaincu que la loyauté du Duc d'Orleans etait la meilleure garantie de l'avenir royal destiné au Duc de Bordeaux, il réalisa sans retard un projet qu'il n'avait encore conçu que vaguement. Non content d'abdiquer la Couronne, il usa de l'empire absolu qu'il exerçait sur le Dauphin pour le faire consentir lui aussi à une abdication, et il crut au salut de sa dynastie."-LOUIS BLANC, Dix Ans de Louis Philippe, i. 374, 375.

rer nettement la cause de la maison d'Orléans de celle de

The whole royal carriages had been pressed into the service, and conveyed a considerable number. The advanced guard, consisting of veterans and National Guards, which alone preserved the appearance or order of soldiers, was under the orders of General Excelmans. General Pajol, who commanded the whole, and who was too experienced a soldier not to know the value of such a disorderly rabble in the open field, trembled at every step lest the opening of a masked battery, or a charge of cavalry of the Guard, should throw the whole into confusion, and drive it headlong back to Paris. Careless of the future, the strange multitude proceeded gayly on their way, in great part still blackened by the smoke, and animated by the spirit of the barricades, singing the Marseil laise and other revolutionary songs; while the frequent discharges of muskets from the ranks told the commanders but too clearly how unskillful their followers were in the use of arms, or how little inured to military 1 Lac. iv. 521, discipline. Several persons in the staff were wounded by these stray 387, 388; Cap. shots, and General Pajol himself ii. 220, 221; feared for his life at the hands of Louis Blanc, his own troops.1

522; Lam. viii.

i. 377, 379.

93.

shal Maison.

When the three commissioners who preceded this revolutionary rabble were introduced to the King at Ram- Falsehoods told bouillet, he asked them with the the King by Marvoice of authority-"What do you wish with me? I have arranged every thing with the Duke of Orleans, my lieutenantgeneral of the kingdom." So thoroughly was the unfortunate monarch, who judged of others by what he felt in himself, persuaded of the loyalty and good faith of that prince, that that very morning he had made the Duke of Luxembourg, who commanded the Guard, publish an address to that body, in which he assured them of the same situations and rank in the service of that sovereign which they had enjoyed in his own. Odillon Barrot upon this took up the word, and impressed upon the King the necessity of submitting, in the interest of the Duke de Bordeaux, whose name had not as yet been implicated in the debates, to a necessity which could no longer be avoided, and of the extreme inexpedience of founding his throne in blood. The King was calm and decided; he was still undetermined whether or not to try the fate of arms. "If the King," said he, "would avoid involving the kingdom in unheard-of calamities, and a useless effusion of blood, it is indispensable that his Majesty and his family should instantly leave France. There are eighty thousand men who have issued from Paris, ready to fall on the royal forces." The King upon this took Marshal Maison into the embrasure of a window, and said, “Marshal Maison, you are a soldier and a man of honor; tell me, on your word of honor, is the army which has marched out of Paris against me really eighty thousand strong?" And a French soldier and marshal answered, "Sire! I can not give you the number exactly, but it is very numerous, and may amount to that force." "Enough!" replied the King; "I believe you, and I consent to every thing, to spare the blood of my Guard."* With that he gave

* M. Louis Blanc's account of this important interview is substantially the same. "M. Odillon Barrot prit la parole

ii. 224, 226;

Lae. iv. 522 Xiii 191, 192; Louis Blanc, i.

400.

94.

tenon, and fare

The die being now cast, and the final resolution taken, the King gave orJourney to Main- ders for the journey to Cherbourg on the following day. The inwell to the Guard. telligence of this determination Aug. 4. caused the few regiments of the line which still adhered to his standard to take their departure. But nothing could shake the fidelity of the Guard, which, in undiminished strength, though with sad hearts and mournful visages, followed the long cortège of carriages which was conveying their sovereign and the royal family into exile. They halted the first night at Maintenon, the splendid seat of the family of Noailles, built by Louis XIV. for his favorite queen, where they were received with noble generosity by its illustrious owners; and there, on the following morning, the King bade adieu to the greater part of the Guard, reserving only for his escort to the coast the Gardesdu-corps and Gendarmerie d'Elite, with six pieces of cannon, under the command of Marmont, on whom he had generously bestowed it, to show he retained no rancor for the events at Paris and St. Cloud. The whole Guard was drawn up in the park and on the road as the royal cortège passed them, and they presented arms for the last time to their sovereign. No words can express the emotion which was felt on both sides. His faults, his imprudences, were forgotten in the magnitude of his fall; they saw only their monarch in misfortune, and the last of a long race of sovereigns, with his whole family, driven into exile by his own subjects. Grief swelled every heart; few dry eyes were seen in the vast and noble array. The counteavec assurance. Il parla des horreurs de la guerre civile, du danger de braver des passions encore incandescentes. Et comme Charles X. insistait sur les droits du Duc de Bordeaux formellement réservés par l'Acte d'Abdication, l'orateur lui réprésenta, d'une voix caressante, que ce n'était pas dans le sang qu'il fallait placer le trone de Henri V. Et soirante mille hommes menacent Rambouillet ajouta le Maréchal Maison. A ces mots le Roi, qui marchait à grands pas, s'arrête et fait signe au Maréchal Maison qu'il désire l'entretenir en particulier. Après quel. ques moments d'hésitation le Maréchal y consent. Alors le regardant fixement, Monsieur,' lui dit le Roi je crois è votre loyauté je suis prêt à me fier à votre parole: est-i! vrai que l'armée Parisienne qui s'avance soit composée de soixante mille hommes ? OUI, SIRE.' Charles X.n'hésita plus. Le Duc de Luxembourg publia un Ordre du Jour, pour apprendre aux Gardes, que leur position sous Henri V. serait la même que sous Charles X.: tant le vieux Monarque avait de peine à se persuader qu'il eût un successeur dans le Lieutenant-Général. Il le croyait si peu qu'il chargea M. Alexandre de Girardin d'aller prendre à Paris 600,000 francs sur le trésor; et comme il était revenu qu'on craignait qu'il n'emportât les diamants de la Couronne, il repoussa cette supposition avec beaucoup de véhémence et de dignité. Pourquoi d'ailleurs aurait-il emporté des diamants qu'il savait faire partie de l'héritage de son petit-fils."-LOUIS BLANC, Dix Ans de Louis Philippe, i. 400, .01.

95.

The journey to Cherbourg lasted twelve days -a prolonged period of agony, during which the discrowned King and his Journey to unhappy family tasted, drop by drop, Cherbourg. the cup of humiliation, suffering, and exile. The route was made to avoid the great towns, so that the King had never the mortification of seeing the royal arms supplanted by those of the Duke of Orleans, who had been proclaimed King on the 6th August. The peasantry in the villages through which they traveled, and where they passed the night, were silent and respectful: they neither received them with acclamations nor with scoffs. There is something in great reverses which, in all but the most savage bosoms, melts to pity, or overawes into silence. Marmont, during the whole journey, rode on horseback at the right of the King's carriage, and many of the greatest nobles of France added to the lustre of their historic names by their fidelity to misfortune. The Duke of Luxembourg was there, and the Duke de Guiche; the Duke de Levis and the Duke de Polignac; Auguste de la Rochejaquelein—a name which sustained itself with honor amidst every reverse of the monarchy-and the Prince of Croz; the Count de Mesnard, the Count de Brissac, Baron Dumas, preceptor of the Duke de Bordeaux, and Madame Gontaut, governess of his young sister. Madame de St. Maure, the Countess de Bouillé, and several other ladies of distinction, were there also, and added to the dignity of their rank by the display of the fidelity by which it is ennobled. Great apprehensions were entertained of some disturbances in Normandy on passage through, as there had been many acts of incendiarism during the preceding convulsions, but every thing passed over in peace. The fall of the monarchy had hushed into silence every lesser passion. No tricolor flag or ensign of revolution met his eye. At Carentan only he received, in the Moniteur, the account of the successful usurpation of Louis Philippe. He read it in silence, and laid down the paper without uttering a word of reproach. 2 Lam. viii. The only act of treason which he 395, 396; heard of during the journey was by Cap.ii. 381, his first subject.2

their

382.

Guard at

The exiles remained two days at Valognes, to give time for the vessels which 96. were expected to come round to Cher- Adieu to the bourg; and as the districts where last of the danger had been apprehended were now passed, Charles took the oppor- August 9. tunity to dismiss the remains of his faithful Guard. He assembled around him the officers and six of the oldest privates of the

Valognes.

103.

to have chosen their consuls from among the companions of Catiline. But admitting all this-conceding that the Liberal party were irrevocably alGreat error of ienated from the Bourbons, and the King in the leagued together in secret, by every ground he took means, legal or illegal, to effect for resistance. their overthrow-still it is not the less apparent that the King committed a signal and fatal mistake in inducing the conflict on the ground which he actually assumed. He took his stand upon his prerogative; he insisted upon his right to choose his ministers without control, as Charles I. had done upon his right to appoint officers to the militia without the concurrence of Parliament. In form, and according to the letter of the constitution, he was entitled to do so; in substance and reality he was not. Even if there had been no doubt on the subject, it would have been wise to have tried the experiment of dividing the Liberal party, by taking their leaders into office, before periling all upon the irrevocable issue of the sword. Great is often the effect of such a transposition upon the ideas of men. Power is a very different thing when wielded by ourselves, and when exercised over us by others. Many who go to church to scoff, remain to pray. Even supposing that the republican tendency of the Liberal party was unchangeable, and that their leaders would have dethroned the King by acts of parliament as effectually as they did by the erection of barricades, still it was to the last degree unwise for Government to take its stand on a doubtful ground, and still more to maintain it by unlawful means. Every thing in such a conflict depends on external appearances and the first acts; the vast majority of men are entirely governed by them. It is of the utmost importance to let the first illegal step be taken by your adversaries. The clearest knowledge obtained of an intention on the part of a body of men to commit high treason, will not justify the arrest of their leaders before some overt act demonstrating that intent has been committed: a party will always deny illegal intentions till they have been irrevocably manifested by deeds, and they will be believed by all who sympathize with them in opinion, till the contrary is forced upon them by incontrovertible evidence.

104.

tion on the part of the Government.

Still more deserving of reprobation was the conduct of the Polignac AdministraExtraordi- tion in the preparations which they nary want made to support the Crown when of prepara- the conflict was once engaged. They were well aware that the ordonnances would provoke resistance; it was not to be supposed that a party which had been conspiring for fifteen years to overthrow them would abandon the contest without a struggle, especially when they had gained the immense advantage of beginning the conflict on legal grounds, and to resist what was in appearance at least an invasion of the constitution. The Ministers had themselves been the first to draw the sword, and must have made up their minds to abide its issue. What preparations, then, had they made to meet a conflict on which the salvation of the dynasty, and with it the liberty of France, depended, in a city which could turn out a hundred thousand

Not a

combatants, of whom nearly a half were old soldiers or national guards, who still had their arms? They had collected eleven thousand men, of whom only one half were Guards, upon whom reliance could be placed, eight guns, and four rounds of grape-shot for each gun! Magazines of provisions, carriages for the wounded, stores of any kind, there were none. loaf of bread was to be had by men who had been eighteen hours under arms; not a drop of water to assuage the thirst produced by the sun of the dog-days, then darting his rays with unwonted intensity. Prince Polignac, calm and serene, not because he had provided against danger, but because he shut his eyes to it, flattered himself that he had forty thousand men at his disposal, because there were that number quartered within a circuit of twenty-five miles round Paris; forgetting the rapidity with which events succeed each other when the conflict once begins in the streets of a city, and that it was of little moment what number of men were at Versailles, St. Cloud, or Courbevoie, if the insurgents were in possession of the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries, and the telegraph. When Marshal Soult suppressed the insurrection at the cloister of St. Meri, in the following year, he assembled eighty thousand men and a hundred pieces of cannon-a force as great as that which fought at Austerlitz. With truth did Metternich say, when the proceedings at Paris were reported to him, "I would be less alarmed if Polignac was more so." Talleyrand was well aware of the vital importance of maintaining the Tuileries, on the part of any who would retain the Government of France. When informed, on the 29th, that they had been evacuated, he walked to the time-piece on the mantel-piece, and observing the hour, said, “Mark it well for future time, that to-day, at ten minutes past twelve, the elder branch Louis of the Bourbons ceased to reign in Blanc. i. France." 165, 259.

at once ar

the Liber

als.

Equally marked by incapacity was the conduet of Government in not at once, 105. when the insurrection began, arrest- Great fault ing its known leaders, and all those of Governwho, from their position in the ment in not Chambers or in society, were likely resting the to be at its head. During the whole leaders of time it continued, those leaders were in consultation at the hotel of M. Lafitte, without any escort; Louis Philippe, who supplanted Charles X. on the throne, was at Neuilly, without guard or protection of any sort. A squadron of gendarmes could have arrested all who, when the crisis was at its height, either disposed of or accepted the crown. Yet nothing of the kind was thought of until the morning of the 29th, when a warrant to arrest the Liberal leaders was put into the hands of Marmont, who was persuaded by Arago not to execute it. Such infatuation appears almost inconceivable; but its ruinous consequences are put in the clearest light by the decisive effects which, on a similar crisis, attended the opposite course pursued by Prince Louis Napoleon. On the night of 1st December, 1852, on the eve of his coup d'état, the whole chiefs of the Liberal party and two-thirds of the National Assembly in Paris were arrested, and quietly lodged in Vincennes, or the other