I had the Since that at some time or other, attract the King's notice. happiness to see this prediction accomplished. time I regularly saw Rapp whenever we both happened to be in Paris, which was pretty often. I have already mentioned that in the month of August the King named me Councillor of State.1 On the 19th of the following month I was appointed Minister of State and member of the Privy Council. I may close these volumes by relating a circumstance very flattering to me, and connected with the last-mentioned nomination. The King had directed M. de Talleyrand to present to him, in his official character of President of the Council of Ministers, a list of the persons who might be deemed suitable as members of the Privy Council. The King having read the list, said to his Minister, "But, M. de Talleyrand, I do not see here the names of two of our best friends, Bourrienne and Alexis de Noailles."—" Sire, I thought their nomination would seem more flattering in coming directly from your Majesty." The King then added my name to the list, and afterwards that of the Comte Alexis de Noailles, so that both our names are written in Louis XVIII.'s own hand in the original Ordinance.2 I have now brought to a conclusion my narrative of the extraordinary events in which I have taken part, either as a spectator or an actor, during the course of a strangely diversified life, of which nothing now remains but recollections. The oriquial manuscript of M. de Bourrienne ends here. 1 I discharged the functions of Councillor of State until 1818, at which time an Ordinance appeared declaring those functions incompatible with the title of Minister of State.-Bourrienne. 2 For a totally different version of this incident see the passage about Bourrienne in the following chapter, p. 463, and De Vitrolles, tome iii. p. 219. 405 CHAPTER XXIV.1 THE CENT JOURS. THE extraordinary rapidity of events during the Cent Jours, or Hundred Days of Napoleon's reign in 1815, and the startling changes in the parts previously filled by the chief personages, make it difficult to consider it as an historical period; it more resembles a series of sudden theatrical transformations, only broken by the great pause while the nation waited for news from the army. The first Restoration of the Bourbons had been so unexpected, and was so rapidly carried out, that the Bonapartists, or indeed all France, had hardly realised the situation before Napoleon was again in the Tuileries; and during the Cent Jours both Bonapartists and Royalists were alike rubbing their eyes, asking whether they were awake, and wondering which was the reality and which the dream, the Empire or the Restoration. It is both difficult and interesting to attempt to follow the history of the chief characters of the period; and the reader must pardon some abrupt transitions from person to person, and from group to group, while the details of some subsequent movements of the Bonaparte family 2 must be thrown in to give a proper idea of the strange revolution in their fortunes. We may divide the characters with which 1 This chapter is inserted by the Editor of the 1885 edition. 2 The account given of the Bonaparte family is founded on Wouters' Histoire Chronologique de la République et de l'Empire suivie des Annales Napoléoniennes (Bruxelles, Wouters Frères, 1847), which was written under the superintendence of Prince Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte. See also for many of the characters in this chapter the Court and Camp of Bonaparte (London, Murray, 1831), which is fairly correct considering its date. we have to deal into five groups, the Bonaparte family, the Marshals, the Statesmen of the Empire, the Bourbons, and the Allied Monarchs. One figure and one name will be missing, but if we omit all account of poor, bleeding, mutilated France, it is but leaving her in the oblivion in which she was left at the time by every one except by Napoleon. The disaster of 1814 had rather dispersed than crushed the Bonaparte family, and they rallied immediately on the return from Elba. The final fall of the Empire was total ruin to them. The provisions of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which had been meant to ensure a maintenance to them, had not been carried out while Napoleon was still a latent power, and after 1815 the Bourbons were only too happy to find a reason for not paying a debt they had determined never to liquidate. It was well for any of the Bourbons in their days of distress to receive the bounty of the usurper, but there was a peculiar pleasure in refusing to pay the price promised for his immediate abdication. The flight of the Bonapartes in 1815 was rapid. Metternich writes to Maria Louisa in July 1815: "Madame Mère and Cardinal Fesch left yesterday for Tuscany. We do not know exactly where Joseph is. Lucien is in England under a false name, Jérôme in Switzerland, Louis at Rome. Queen Hortense has set out for Switzerland, whither General de Flahault and his mother will follow her. Murat seems to be still at Toulon; this, however, is not certain." Was ever such an account of a dynasty given! These had all been among the great ones of Europe: in a moment they were fugitives, several of them having for the rest of their lives a bitter struggle with poverty. Fortunately for them the Pope, the King of Holland, and the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, were not under heavy obligations to Napoleon, and could thus afford to give to his family the protection denied them by those monarchs who believed themselves bound to redeem their former servility. When Napoleon landed Maria Louisa was in Austria, and she was eager to assist in taking every precaution to prevent her son, the young King of Rome, being spirited off to join THE KING OF ROME. 407 She her his father, whose fortunes she had sworn to share. self was fast falling under the influence of the one-eyed Austrian General, Neipperg, just then left a widower, who was soon to be admitted to share her bed. By 1829 she seemed to have entirely forgotten the different members of the Bonaparte family, speaking of her life in France as "a bad dream." 1 She obtained the Grand-Duchy of Parma, where she reigned till 1847, marrying a third time, it is said, the Count Bombelles, and dying just too soon to be hunted from her Duchy by the Revolution of 1848. There is something very touching in most that we know of the poor young King of Rome, from his childish but strangely prescient resistance to his removal from Paris to Blois on the approach of the Allies in 1814, to the message of remembrance sent in after years to the column of the Place Vendôme, "his only friend in Paris." At four years of age Meneval describes him as gentle, but quick in answering, strong, and with excellent health. “Light curly hair in ringlets set off a fresh face, while fine blue eyes lit up his regular features. He was precociously intelligent, and knew more than most children older than himself." When Meneval-the former secretary of his father, giving up his post in Austria with Maria Louisa, as he was about to rejoin Napoleon-took farewell of the Prince in May 1815, the poor little motherless child "drew me towards the window, and, giving me a touching look, said in a low tone, 'Monsieur Méva, tell him (Napoleon) that I always love him dearly.' ." We say " motherless," because Maria Louisa seems to have yielded up her child at the dictates of policy to be closely guarded as easily as she gave up her husband. "If," wrote Madame de Montesquiou, his governess, "the child had a mother, I would leave him in her hands, and be happy, but she is nothing like a mother, she is more indifferent to his fate than the most utter stranger in her service." His grandfather, the Emperor Francis, to do him 4 1 This is in opposition to the mention made of Maria Louisa in Napoleon's Will, but see Meneval, tome ii. pp. 360-369, and Vitrolles, tome iii. pp. 500-508, and the Talleyrand Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 19. 2 Meneval, tome ii. p. 225. justice, seems to have been really kind to the lad, and while, in 1814, 1815, and in 1830, taking care to deprive him of all chance of his glorious inheritance, still seems to have cared for him personally, and to have been always kind to him. There is no truth in the story that the Austrians neglected his education and connived at the ruin of his faculties. Both his tutor, the Count Maurice Dietrichstein, and Marshal Marmont, who conversed with him in 1831, agree in speaking highly of him as full of promise: Marmont's evidence being especially valuable as showing that the Austrians did not object to the Duke of Reichstadt (as he had been created by his grandfather in 1818),1 learning all he could of his father's life from one of the Marshals. In 1831 Marmont describes him: "I recognised his father's look in him, and in that he most resembled Napoleon. His eyes, not so large as those of Napoleon, and sunk deeper in their sockets, had the same expression, the same fire, the same energy. His forehead was like that of his father, and so was the lower part of his face and his chin. Then his complexion was that of Napoleon in his youth, with the same pallor and the same colour of the skin, but all the rest of his face recalled his mother and the House of Austria. He was taller than Napoleon by about three inches." 2 As long as the Duke lived his name was naturally the rallying-point of the Bonapartes, and was mentioned in some of the many conspiracies against the Bourbons. In 1830 Joseph Bonaparte tried to get the sanction of the Austrians to his nephew being put forward as a claimant to the throne of France, vacant by the flight of Charles X., but they held their captive firmly.3 A very interesting passage is given in the Memoirs of Charles Greville, who says that Prince Esterhazy told him "a great deal about the Duke of Reichstadt, who, if he had lived, would have probably played a great part in the world. He died of a premature decay, brought on, apparently, by over-exertion and over-excitement; his talents 1 For the indemnity set apart for the Duke instead of Parma see Meneval, tome ii. p. 214. 2 Marmont, tome viii. p. 375. 3 Metternich, vol. v. p. 107, and Iung's Lucien, tome iii. pp. 398-403. 4 Marmont (tome viii. pp. 399, 400) attributes this to the Duke having overheard a sneer about his want of energy, after which he over-strained himself. |