Public opinion on Ney's execution.

demanded with a low voice, who the criminal was, thus abandoned on the public highway, and shot to death by soldiers of the grand army. None had the courage to reply that it was the body of the "bravest of the brave," the hero of the Beresina. After the legal period of exposure, the hospitable sisters of a neighbouring convent claimed the body to bestow funeral honours upon it in private, had it carried to their chapel, and watched and prayed alternately around the forlorn coffin.

XXV.

When the Parisians awoke and found that Ney had been executed, bitter shame seized upon every soul. The court party stupidly rejoiced at being revenged. But for one heroic enemy, disarmed and repentant, whom they had immolated, they made thousands of new enemies amongst those who looked for an act of clemency called for by so many services rendered to the country, and so much fame acquired for France. A feeling more dangerous than anger, because it is more durable, smouldered in the hearts of impartial youth, of an outraged army, and of a grateful people. This was disgust for the pusillanimity of that court which had never fought, and which allowed to be shed in its cause such popular and glorious blood, as a libation to the foreigner, on a soil still trampled under the feet of our enemies

We must, however, say, in the defence of the King, of the ministers, and of the immense mass of the royalists, that they were repugnant from moderation, from honour, and from sensibility, to this useless, cruel, and shameful sacrifice. In their eyes, and in those of the impartial portion of the world, Ney was a great culprit; but his was a glorious life. His fault was amongst those which are condemned but pardoned: he had stumbled in his weakness, not through premeditation. He tried and condemned himself. He had redeemed beforehand his military crime, by exploits which will be an eternal theme in the camps of France As a political chief he was no longer

to be dreaded. To save him would not be to save a factious man but a soldier The amnesty which it was indispensable

832 RESTORATION OF MONARCHY IN FRANCE.

Impolicy of Ney's execution.

[BOOK 34.

to throw over the army could not find a nobler opportunity than this. Henri IV. would have embraced him who was slaughtered by his descendants. How often since have they not lamented this fatal yielding to the vindictive passions of their Court and their Chamber, which ordered them to do this murder! What a power of popularity would they not have derived against the opposition, in the critical days of their dynasty, from this plebeian blood spared and reserved for the country; this arm regained by magnanimity to their cause! Though insulted for a few days in the privacy of their palace by the cowardly counsellors of abject fear, they would have been avenged and adopted by the people, who only recognise the greatness of royal races by their greatness of soul. They would have fallen perhaps at the destined hour, but history would not have this reproach to cast upon their memory, and instead of a stain of blood upon their reign there would have been, in conjunction with the name of Ney a tear of admiration. Instead of commanding as kings they obeyed as slaves. The court was cruel, the King weak, the ministers complaisant, the Chamber of Deputies implacable, Europe goading, the Chamber of Peers cowardly as a senate in the fallen days of Rome. Let each of these bear a part in the murder of the hero, France disclaims the deed.

BOOK THIRTY-FIFTH.

Animosities of parties-Impassioned reaction in the departments: prevotal courts-Debates on the amnesty law: Messrs. Royer-Collard de Labourdonnaie, Chateaubriand-Production of the will of Maria Antoinette-Relaxation in the severity of public opinion-Dissolution of the Chamber-Agitation in the departments-Conspiracy of Grenoble-Didier: his character, previous life, his connection with the Orleans party-His abortive attempt on Grenoble-Proclamations and vengeance-Flight and courageous death of Didier-Palace intrigues: formation of the Doctrinaire party-The Coup d'état of the 5th of September, ratified by the elections-Fury of the ultraroyalists: their private note to the congress of Aix-la-ChapelleEvacuation of France by the allies-Memoir by Louis XVIII. on the ministerial crisis (December, 1818).

I.

THE execution of Marshal Ney, instead of closing, as the King and the ministers had hoped, the era of proscriptions and reprisals, and satisfying the thirst for recriminations of the Court and Chambers only excited it still further. All France, encouraged to retaliation by the compliance of the government in yielding to its passions, instead of occupying itself with its deliverance, and its reconstruction, only appeared to occupy itself with its vengeance. The zeal for the Bourbons was commensurate with the wrath against, and the denunciations of their enemies. The prevotal courts, like a star chamber against acts and opinions, outvied each other in severity in the depart ments. The country was nothing but a vast military tribunal, judging, condemning, and too often immolating the pretended accomplices of the Bonapartist conspiracy. The most sinister motions were daily made in the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers. The seduction was so irresistible and so general, that on the bitterest propositions scarcely two or three voices

Animosities of parties.

protested against these exaggerations of prudence, and against the madness of party zeal. The King felt that the reins of royalist opinion were eiuding his grasp to pass into the hands of his brother, the Count d'Artois, and of his most violent counsellors, in more intimate connection than himself with the passions of the Chamber. For fear of losing all, he conceded. a great deal, and then became himself alarmed at the concessions he had made. Accused in secret of having thrown his dynasty into exile by compounding before the 20th of March with the requirements of revolutionary opinion and with the army of Bonaparte, he had to redeem in the eyes of his family, of the emigrants, and of the clergy, his pretended complaisance for the revolution, As a party chief suspected even by his own party, secretly undermined in his own palace by the violent and ambitious partizans of his brother, obliged to please them even while he restrained them, convinced at the same time that he could not secure his reign but by moderating his friends, and gaining over his enemies, by adopting the glory, and by founding the constitutional liberty of the nation, his situation in the midst of this tempest of conflicting passions, was that of a pilot who struggles at the same time with his own crew and with the raging elements. He deviated for a moment from his proper course under the influence of too strong a gale, intending to resume it as soon as the fury of public opinion might allow the voice of sound policy to be heard.

II.

In the meantime, he allowed the royalist committees of the departments to dictate and revoke the choice of his agents, to purify the ministry and the army, to draw up lists of those unworthy of serving in the army, to publish proclamations for mutual defence in the provinces of the south and west, to cause the assembling of armed parties, and to dismiss the civil judges from their irremovable functions, the guarantee of their independence. Imperative addresses, under the semblance of devotion to the King, called upon him, in the name of the two Chambers, for efficacious measures of foresight and

Reaction in the Departments.

severity. His ministers obeyed these impuises. The Duke de Feltre dismissed a great number of those officers who had served during the hundred days. Barbé-Marbois, minister of Justice, promulgated a code prohibiting seditious manifestations; M. Decazes, Minister of Police, proclaimed a suspension of individual liberty, which gave the government arbitrary power over the citizens. The ministers, in supporting these measures in the two chambers, had only to defend them against excessive punishment, and against the penalty of death, which the orators of the vengeance party invoked on every occasion M. Pasquier, for a long time administrator of the police of the capital under Bonaparte, was now in the tribune the most devoted adherent of the Bourbons. M. de Chateaubriand carried his enthusiasm even to the insulting of the vanquished and the glorification of the conqueror. One of those men who constitute themselves the dominant voices in the chorus of political passions, M. de Labourdonnaye drew up, under the false name of amnesty, a graduated table of proscription, which included the names of 1,200 persons condemned to exile or to capital accusations. Other lists, more or less vindictive, were drawn up by other deputies of the same faction. Proscriptions were no longer made out with reference to the men or the crime, but according to the category and the situation. The Chamber applauded these initiatory measures; it named committees of deputies to draw them up in proper form, and to enlarge and extend their powers. The government, which was tacitly accused by these motions of tardiness, hesitation, or complicity with the public perils, trembled to see itself out-done and abandoned by the Chambers, if it did not itself yield to this impetus, in order that it might still retain the power of moderating and directing it.

III.

It was thus that the Duke de Richelieu brought before the Chambers an amnesty bill. This law had a double object in the mind of the King: to quiet the alarms of the vanquished party, which might be driven to revolt by despair, and to