Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

of power, and not on that of reliance upon the man."

12. Nor were the financial, naval, and military preparations of Great Britain on a scale incommensurate to the magnitude of the undertaking to which she was committed, and the engagements she had contracted with foreign powers. On the 19th April, the House of Commons, by a majority of one hundred and twenty-five, the numbers being one hundred and eighty-three to fiftyeight,-renewed the property tax, producing now fully £15,000,000 annually, for another year: a decisive proof that they were in earnest in supporting the government. The whole war-taxes were continued, and supplies to an unprecedented extent voted; those for the navy being £18,000,000, while those for the army rose to the enor mous amount of £24,000,000, besides £3,800,000 for the ordnance. With these large sums, two hundred and seven thousand regular soldiers were maintained, besides eighty thousand militia, and three hundred and forty thousand local militia-in all, six hundred and fifty thousand men in arms; and the ships of the line placed in commission were fifty-eight. The subsidies to foreign powers amounted to no less than £11,000,000; and the whole expenditure of the year, when all was paid, reached the enormous sum of £110,000,000. To provide for this expenditure, the permanent and war taxes were calcu

that the British troops in Flanders would be first exposed to the shock of war; while at the same time it was of the highest importance to the general cause not to lose the vantage-ground which they there possessed, or to permit, as had so often previously been done, the advanced post of Europe against France to be converted into that of France against Europe. The preparations of the newly-elected monarchy of Belgium could not be expected to be in any state of forwardness; the Hanoverian levies were not as yet raised; and the flower of the British army was in Canada, or scattered over the American coast. In these circumstances, everything depended on the vigour of the British cabinet and the unanimity of the British people; and neither was wanting on the occasion. On the 6th April, a message from the Prince Regent formally announced to both Houses of Parliament the events which had recently occurred in France, in direct contravention of the treaty of Paris, the communications entered into with his allies on the subject, and the necessity of augmenting the military forces both by sea and land. The address, which as usual was an echo of the message, was moved in the House of Lords by the Earl of Liverpool, and in the Commons by Lord Castlereagh; and so strongly were the members of both houses impressed with the awful nature of the crisis, and the necessity of making a vigorous effort in the out-lated to produce £80,000,000, and loans set to meet it, that the address in the House of Peers was carried without a dissenting voice, and in the Commons by a majority of one hundred and eighty-three, the numbers being two hundred and twenty to thirty-s -seven. Lord Castlereagh put the matter upon its true footing in the concluding sentence of his speech: "Some may think that an armed peace would be preferable to a state of war; but the danger must be fairly looked at: and, knowing that good faith was opposite to the sys-port of the sinking-fund. If that noble tem of the party to be treated with knowing that the rule of his conduct was self-interest, regardless of every other consideration, whatever decision you come to must rest on the principle

to the amount of £39,000,000 were raised for the service of Great Britain and Ireland; but these sums, great as they were, proved unequal to the charges of the year. When the whole expendi ture of the war was wound up at the close of the year, the unfunded or floating debt had risen to £48,725,000; the capital of the funded debt was £792,000,000; the annual charge of it was £42,000,000; but of that sum no less than £12,968,000 was for the sup

establishment had been kept up, even at that diminished amount,* by maintaining the indirect taxes, set apart by the wisdom of former times for its * See Appendix, A, Chap. xc.

support, it would have paid off the whole national debt by the year 1845; and the nation, from the effects of the long peace, purchased by the sacrifices of the war, would have discharged the whole burdens contracted during its continuance.

13. In addition to these immense military and naval preparations, the subsidies which Great Britain became bound to advance to foreign powers were so considerable, that it might truly he said that the whole military force of Europe was this year arrayed in English pay against France. Such was the exhaustion of the finances of the greater powers, from the unparalleled efforts they had made during the two preceding years, that they were wholly unable to put their armies in motion without this pecuniary assistance. By a treaty concluded at Vienna, between Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, the former of these powers agreed to furnish to the three latter a subsidy of £5,000,000, to be paid by monthly instalments to the ministers of these powers in equal proportions; and if peace was concluded within the year, they were to receive after its signature, Russia four months', and Austria and Prussia two months' subsidy each, to provide for the return of the troops to their own dominions. Sweden obtained £521,000, Hanover £206,000, the lesser German powers £1,724,000. The stipulated sums paid to the greater powers required to be enlarged; and the total sum paid by Great Britain in the year to foreign powers exceeded £11,000,000.* It is the most astonishing proof both of the resources of the British empire, and of the admirable system of finance

• The subsidies paid were:Austria,

£1,796,220

3,241,919 2,382,823 206,590

Russia,

Prussia,

Hanover,

Spain,

147,533

Portugal,

100,000

Sweden,

521,061

Italy and Netherlands,

78,152

Minor Powers,

1,724,000

Miscellaneous,

Total,

837,134 £11,035,232

and currency by which they had been sustained, that at a period when the financial resources of all the other countries in Europe were entirely exhausted, it alone was able not only to make head against its own gigantic expenditure, but to retain all the other armies of the Allies in its pay.

14. Nothing which vigour and activity could do was wanting on the part of Napoleon, to provide the means of defence against this prodigious phalanx of enemies, ready to overwhelm him. But such was the exhaustion of the military strength of the country in consequence of his preceding wars, and the apathy or despair of the people from the effects of long-continued disaster, that all his efforts were unable to raise anything like an adequate force. The arsenals and fortresses were nearly empty, especially on the eastern frontier, which was most exposed to danger, from the exhaustion of the preceding campaign or the abstractions of the allied armies; twelve thousand pieces of cannon in fifty-three fortresses had been ceded by the treaties at Paris; and the regular troops in arms did not amount to a hundred thousand men. The treasury, after the first six weeks' expenditure, was exhausted; arrears of taxes were almost irrecoverable; the national credit was equal to nothing. To provide forces for withstanding the hostility of combined Europe, with such means and in such a country, was indeed a herculean task; but the genius of Napoleon was equal to the undertaking, and but for the surpassing firmness of Wellington, and the gallantry of the British troops, his efforts would in all probability have proved successful.

15. His first step was to restore to the old regiments, with their eagles, their numbers ennobled by so many heroic deeds, and so unwisely taken away by the late government. These precious memorials of past glory were given back to the troops with every pomp and circumstance likely to reanimate the spirits of the soldiers. The skeletons of three additional battalions

-Finance Accounts, 1816; Ann. Reg. 1816, 430. were next organised for each regiment;

VOL. XIL

[ocr errors]

the arsenals with guns: purchases of horses to a vast extent were made in all the fairs of the empire: all those of the gendarmerie were taken, and requisitions made from the peasants of draught horses for the use of the artillery and waggon trains. Great part of these purchases were not, as may well be believed, paid for in ready money: orders on the treasury at distant dates were lavishly given, and, under military government, could not be refused; and they constituted no small part of the embarrassment of the government of the second Restoration. But, in the mean time, the things were got. The arming of the troops and equipment of the guns went on with extraordinary rapidity; and an order on the different communes to furnish each a certain portion of the clothing of a battalion, soon provided them with uniforms. Before the beginning of June, two hundred and twenty thou sand men, almost all veteran soldiers, were completely armed, equipped, cloth

and to provide men to fill their ranks, the whole retired veterans were by proclamation invited to join their respective corps. Two additional squadrons were in like manner added to each regiment of cavalry; and thirty new battalions of artillery were raised, chiefly from the sailors of Cherbourg, Brest, and Toulon. Forty battalions, in twenty regiments, were added to the Young Guard, entirely drawn from veterans who had served six campaigns; and two hundred battalions of the national guard were organised, to take the duty of the garrison towns and interior, and thus permit the whole regular troops to be moved to the frontier. By these means the Emperor calculated that the effective strength of the army, by the 1st June, would be raised to four hundred thousand men, of which one-half might be disposable for active operations in the field; and by the 1st September his sanguine temperament led him to hope that he would have five hundred battalions of troops of the line and fifty-ed, and in readiness to take the field; two of the Guards, mustering six hundred thousand combatants, besides sixty thousand admirable horse.

16. To provide arms and the muniments of war for so prodigious a multitude out of the exhausted arsenals, and with the worn-out finances of the empire, was a still more difficult matter; but the ardent genius of the Emperor, appealing to the generous feelings, and rousing the national spirit of the people, was here, too, attended with surprising success. The whole workmen in all the manufactories of arms in the country were doubled twenty thousand muskets a-month were thus obtained; but this supply, great as it was, was far from meeting the exigencies of the moment. To procure additional stores of warlike implements, bodies of permanent workmen were established in many places, in imitation of the corps of workmen on the plains of Grenelle, during the Revolution. The old arms were called in by proclamation, repaired, and served out to the young soldiers: the founderies were everywhere set to work with the utmost vigour to replenish

an astonishing proof of the patriotic spirit of the people, and the enthusiastic ardour with which, in the last struggle of their country, the old soldiers had thrown themselves into the breach.

17. In military arrangements, the power of the Emperor was unfettered, and his genius and prodigious activity appeared in their highest lustre; but in civil administration he was entirely in the hands of Fouché and the Republicans; and they steadily pursued one object, which was to provide a counterpoise to his power in the revival of the republican spirit of the people. Carnot, entirely engrossed in the herculean task of reorganising the national guard, left the direction of civil affairs entirely to that astute Jacobin; and he made such skilful use of his unbounded power and influence as head of the police, that the old regicides and Jacobins were everywhere called up again into activity, and the election for the approaching Chamber of Deputies, summoned for the Champ de Mai, had almost entirely fallen into their hands. His language in this respect was undisguised to his republican allies. "If

that man there," said he, "shall attempt to curb the Jacobin ideas, we will overturn him at once and for ever." Napoleon knew and deeply resented this conduct; but his precarious situation compelled him to dissemble, and continue Fouché in power; for he had no hold of the nation, apart from the army, but through the medium of the Republicans. Such was their influence in the present precarious state of his fortunes, that he was obliged by a decree to call out the national guards over the whole kingdom: the very thing, of all others, to which he was most averse. In truth, he was surrounded by a crowd of selfish and unprincipled men, the very dregs of the Revolution, who were actuated by no other principle but the common one of turning his pressing necessities to the best account for their own private advantage. Meanwhile, such was the address of the Emperor, and the charm of his conversation, that he succeeded in detaching many of the leading men of talent in Paris, who had formerly taken a prominent part against him, from the royalist Cause. Among the rest, M. Sismondi, the great historian, and Benjamin Constant, the able supporter of constitutional freedom, who had so recently published a just and eloquent declamation against him, were entirely won over to his side; and they were intrusted with the arduous duty of aiding in the formation of a constitution. One of the most extraordinary of the many extraordinary gifts with which this wonderful man was endowed, was the power he possessed of subduing the minds of men, and the faculty he had acquired of dazzling penetration the most scute, and winning over hostile prepossessions the most confirmed, by the mere magic of his fascinating conversation.

18. Benjamin Constant has left a precious account of a conversation which Napoleon had with him at this period, which bears every mark of truth. "The nation," said the Emperor, "has rested twelve years from political agitation; for a year it has reposed from war: that double rest has made it now feel the need of

activity. It now wishes, or thinks it wishes, a Tribune and popular assemblies. It did not always do so it threw itself at my feet when I arrived at the government. You must recollect it was so, for you were in opposition. Where was your support, where your strength? Nowhere. I took less power than they wished to give me. At present all is changed: the taste for constitutions, debates, harangues, has returned. Nevertheless, it is only the noisy minority who wish it be assured of that. The people wish only for me; you have seen them pressing on my footsteps, descending from their mountains to see me. Nothing was wanting but a signal from me to make them fall on the Royalists and nobles. But I will never be a king of the Jacquerie. If it is possible to govern with a constitution, all in good time: I desire nothing better; though it is not so easy as some suppose. I wished the empire of the world; and to obtain it, boundless authority was necessary. Possibly to govern France alone, a constitution may be practicable. It is still a problem; but I am willing to try it. I wished the empire of the world-who would not have done so in my place? The world invited me to rule: princes and people vied with each other, crouching beneath my sceptre. Give me your ideas: public discussions, free elections, responsible ministers, the liberty of the press: I have no objections to them-I am the man of the people; if they really wish for liberty, I will give it them; I was never an oppressor from inclination. I had great designs; fate willed it otherwise. I am no longer a conqueror; I cannot be so. I have now but one mission, that of restoring France, and giving it such institutions as are fit for it. But I do not wish to awaken false expectations: a long and difficult struggle awaits us; I have need of the support of the nation; I am willing to give it as much freedom as it can enjoy without relapsing into anarchy. I am growing old; I have need of repose; the rest of a constitutional king may suit me, and still more my son."

19. The financial difficulties of the which had characterised that dreamy Hundred Days were singularly lessened period. The first draft of a constituby the comparatively prosperous con- tion which they submitted to the Emdition in which the treasury was found, peror, was accordingly so democratic, from the diminished expenditure and that even in his present necessities it increased economy of the Bourbon was at once rejected by him. "I will government. Nearly forty millions of never," said he, "subscribe to such francs (£1,600,000) had been left by conditions: I have the army on my Louis XVIII. in the treasury, or in the side, and after what it has done on balance due by the receivers-general; the 20th March, it will know how to and an equal sum fell in shortly after, defend France and its Emperor." Deat stated periods, from the sale of na-feated in this attempt, the Liberal tional wood, which they had previously party in the commission drew up anmade, but for which the bills were not other constitution: and this one, styled yet all due. It was from these re- the "additional act," the work of Consources that the first and indispensable stant and Regnaud St Jean d'Angely, expenses of the Imperial government was little different from the Charter of were defrayed, but they were soon ex- Louis XVIII. Two Chambers, one of hausted by the vast purchases for the Peers and one of Commons, were esarmy; and as the capitalists had no con- tablished on nearly the same footing fidence whatever in the dynasty of Napo- as they had been by the former gov leon, it became a very difficult matter ernment. But three particulars in this to say how the treasury was to be re- new constitution were very remark plenished. As a last resource, the sink-able, and demonstrated how much more ing fund, hitherto invariably respected, was offered as a security to a company of bankers, and at first refused; but their acceptance was at length purchased by such exorbitant interest, that the four millions of francs to which it amounted annually, produced only thirty-one millions of francs; in other words, the government borrowed at twelve per cent. The bills due by the receiversgeneral were discounted at the rate of seventeen and eighteen per cent; and by these extraordinary resources, and forestalling the ordinary revenue, eighty millions of francs (£3,200,000) were raised in April and May, which kept the treasury afloat till the battle of Waterloo terminated at once the difficulties and the political existence of Napoleon.

20. The task of framing a constitution, in a country so long habituated to that species of manufacture as France had been since the Revolution, proved much less difficult than that of restoring the finances. The commission to whom this duty had been devolved, presided over by Benjamin Constant, consisted chiefly of the old patriots of 1789 who had survived the Revolution; and it was governed, accordingly, by the visionary ideas of perfectibility

clearly Napoleon saw the exigencies of the times, and the necessity of bulwarks to power, than the Bourbons had done. 1. The peerage was declared to be hereditary-not for life only: a provision which at once announced the intention of reviving a feudal nobility. 2. The punishment of confiscation of property, a penalty so well known in the dark ages, abolished by the Charter, was restored in cases of high treason. 3. The family of the Bourbons was for ever proscribed, and even the power of recalling them denied to the people. It was in vain to disguise, that while these articles indicated in the strongest manner an intention to prevent a second restoration of the royal family, they pointed not less unequivocally to the practical abrogation of the power of self-government, and the construction of a strong monarchy for the family of the Emperor; and thus the publication of the "Acte Additionnel," on the 25th April, excited unbounded opposition in both the parties which now divided the nation, and left the Emperor in reality no support but in the soldiers of the army.

21. The public feeling appeared in an article which was inserted in the

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »