THE BOURBONS AT GHENT. 465 the north to hold Lille, where the King intended to take refuge, and the Comte d'Artois remained with the Court. Louis himself, with Marshals Berthier and Macdonald, travelled to Lille, while the Comte d'Artois and his second son, the Duc de Berry, the father of the late Comte de Chambord, moved there with the so-called "Maison du Roi" or Royal Guard. The Duc de Berry had shown too much ardour and roughness in his dealings with the army and with the Bonapartists, and it will be remembered how he was silenced by one old private who, when the Duke turned on him with a snarl as to how little Napoleon had done for him, answered, "And if we chose to give him credit ?" At Lille the King found the Duc d'Orléans and Marshal Mortier, who had closed the gates and kept the garrison in some approach to fidelity to the Bourbons, scarcely, however, being able or perhaps willing to do more than get the King permission to enter on condition of not being accompanied by either the "Maison," or any foreign troops,— not a useless stipulation if we remember that De Vitrolles was at this very time trying to get the Spaniards to enter France to support the Government he was hoping to found in the south. Indeed, the Royalists had a shameful if natural longing for the entry of foreign troops. Marshals Macdonald and Mortier urged the King to remain in France and to go to Dunkirk, which could be held with a smaller garrison than Lille; but Louis was anxious to be safe, and he proceeded to Ghent, where he held a miniature Court with his Ministers Blacas, Clarke, Beugnot, Louis, Dambray, Chateaubriand, and other followers, such as de Vaublanc, Capelle, Anglès, Mounier, and Guizot. The Court was very badly off for money, the King, and Clarke, Duke of Feltre, the War Minister, were the only happy possessors of carriages. They passed their time, as the Abbé Louis once bitterly remarked, in saying foolish things till they had a chance of doing them. The Comte d'Artois, who, probably wisely, certainly cautiously, had refused to go with De Vitrolles to stir up the south until he had placed the King in safety, had ended by going to Ghent too, while the Duc de Berry was at Alost, close by, with a tiny army composed of the remains of the 97 VOL. III. Maison du Roi, of which the most was made in reports. The Duc d'Orléans, always an object of suspicion to the King, had left France with the Royal party, but had refused to stay in Belgium, as he alleged that it was an enemy's country. He crossed to England where he remained, greatly adding to the anxiety of Louis by refusing to join him. The end of these Princes is well known. Louis died in 1824, leaving his throne to his brother; but Charles only held it till 1830, when, after the rising called "the three glorious days of July," he was civilly escorted from France, and took shelter in England. The Duc d'Angoulême died without issue. The Duc de Berry was assassinated in 1820, but his widow gave birth to a posthumous son, the Duc de Bordeaux, or, to fervid Royalists, Henri V., though better known to us as the Comte de Chambord, who died in 1883 without issue, thus ending the then eldest line of Bourbons, and transmitting his claims to the Orleans family. On the fall of Charles X. the Duc d'Orléans became King of the French, but he was unseated by the Revolution of 1848, and died a refugee in England. As the three Princes of the House of Condé, the Prince de Condé, his son, the Duc de Bourbon, and his grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, all died without further male issue, that noble line is extinct. When the news of the escape of Napoleon from Elba reached Vienna on the 7th of March 1815, the three heads of the Allies, the Emperors of Austria and Russia, and the King of Prussia, were still there. Though it was said that the Congress danced but did not advance, still a great deal of work had really been done, and the news of Napoleon's landing created a fresh bond of union between the Allies which stopped all further chances of disunion, and enabled them to practically complete their work by the 9th of June 1815, though the treaties required cobbling for some years afterwards. France, Austria, and England had snatched the greater part of Saxony from the jaws of Prussia, and Alexander had been forced to leave the King of Saxony to reign over half of his former subjects, without, as he wished, sparing him the pain of such a degradation by taking all from him. THE THREE GREAT POWERS. 467 Russia had to be contented with a large increase of her Polish dominions, getting most of the Grand-Duchy of Westphalia. Austria had, probably unwisely, withdrawn from her former outlying provinces in Swabia and the Netherlands, which had before the Revolution made her necessarily the guardian of Europe against France, preferring to take her gains in Italy, gains which she has gradually lost in our days; while Prussia, by accepting the Rhine provinces, completely stepped into the former post of Austria. Indeed, from the way in which Prussia was, after 1815, as it were, scattered across Germany, it was evident that her fate must be either to be crushed by France, or else, by annexing the States enclosed in her dominions, to become the predominating power in Germany. It was impossible for her to remain as she was left. The Allies tightly bound France. They had no desire to have again to march on Paris to restore Louis to the subjects who had such unfortunate objections to being subjected to that desirable monarch. By the second Treaty of Paris, on the 20th of November 1815, France was to be occupied by an Allied force, in military positions on the frontier, not to exceed 150,000 men, to be taken from all the Allied armies, under a commander who was eventually the Duke of Wellington. Originally the occupation was not to exceed five years, but in February 1817 the army was reduced by 30,000 men, one-fifth of each contingent; and by the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle of 9th October 1818 France was to be evacuated by the 30th of November 1818. The three monarchs were probably not sorry to get the Congress over on any terms. Alexander had had his fill of displaying himself in the salons in his favourite part of an Agamemnon generous towards Troy, and he had worn out his first popularity. He was stung by finding some of his favourite plans boldly opposed by Talleyrand and by Metternich, and, indeed, was anxious to meet the last in open combat. Francis had required all the firmness of what he called his Bohemian head to resist the threats, entreaties, and cajoleries employed to get him to acquiesce in the dethronement of the King of Saxony, and the wiping out of the Saxon nationality by the very alliance which professed to fight only for the rights of nations and of their lawful sovereigns. All three monarchs had again the satisfaction of entering Paris, but without enjoying the full glories of 1814. “Our friends the enemies" were not so popular then in France, and the spoliation of the Louvre was not pleasant even to the Royalists. The foreign monarchs soon returned to their own drained and impoverished States. The Emperor Francis had afterwards a quiet reign to his death in 1835, having only to assist his Minister in snuffing out the occasional flashes of a love of freedom in Germany. The King of Prussia returned in a triumph well won by his sturdy subjects, and, in the light of his new honours, the Countess Von Voss tells us he was really handsome. He was now at leisure to resume the discussions on uniform, and the work of fastening and unfastening the numerous buttons of his pantaloons, in which he had been so roughly interrupted by Jéna. The first institution of the Zollverein, or commercial union with several States, gradually extended, was a measure which did much for the unification of Germany. With his brother sovereigns he revisited Paris at the end of the military occupation in 1818, remaining there longer than the others, "because," said the Parisians, "he had discovered an actor at a small theatre who achieved the feat of making him laugh." He died in 1840. His Queen-heartbroken, it was said—had died in 1810. Alexander was still brimming over with the best and most benevolent intentions towards every one. The world was to be free, happy, and religious; but he had rather vague ideas as to how his plans were to be carried out. Thus it is characteristic that when his successor desired to have a solemn coronation as King of Poland it was found that Alexander had not foreseen the difficulties which were met with in trying to arrange for the coronation of a Sovereign of the Greek Church as King of a Roman Catholic State. The much-dreaded but very misty Holy Alliance was one of the few fruits of Alexander's visions. His mind is described as passing through a regular series of stages A RETROGRADE MOVEMENT. 469 with each influence under which he acted. He ended his life, tired out, disillusioned, "deceived in everything, weighed down with regret," obliged to crush the very hopes of his people he had encouraged, dying in 1825 at Taganrog, leaving his new Polish Kingdom to be wiped out by his successors. The minor sovereigns require little mention. They retained any titles they had received from Napoleon, while they exulted, at being free from his heavy hand and sharp superintendence. Each got a share, small or great, of the spoil except the poor King of Denmark, who, being assured by Alexander on his departure that he carried away all hearts, answered, "Yes, but not any souls." The reintroduction of much that was bad in the old system (one country even going so far as to re-establish torture), the steady attack on liberty and on all liberal ideas, Würtemberg being practically the only State which grumbled at the tightening of the reins SO dear to Metternich, all formed a fitting commentary on the proclamations by which the Sovereigns had hounded on their people against the man they represented as the one obstacle to the freedom and peace of Europe. In gloom and disenchantment the nations sat down to lick their wounds. The contempt shown by the monarchs for everything but the right of conquest, the manner in which they treated the lands won from Napoleon as a gigantic "pool" which was to be shared amongst them, so many souls to each, their total failure to fulfil their promises to their subjects of granting liberty, all these slowly bore their fruits in after years, and their effects are not even yet exhausted. The right of a sovereign to hold his lands was now, by the public law of Europe, to be decided by his strength. The rights of the people were treated as not existing. Truly, as our most gifted poetess has sung— "The Kings crept out-the peoples sat at home, (A pall embroidered with worn images |