subject to bear arms, it remained with the emperor to select those who were most proper to serve. Other preparations acquainted the Parisians of the extremities to which the accession of Buonaparte was like to reduce them. The most formidable fortifications were planned for the defence of the heights of Montmartre. Detachments of the federates, and of the national guard, were employed in executing these batteries and intrenchments; and their labour announced, that Paris might expect another day of siege and storm. Nor was the voice of warlike preparation silent on the frontiers. An address of the ferocious Davoust, now minister at war, threatened to transfer to the towns of France the measures of defence by which he had ruined Hamburgh while he defended it. "No one," said this proclama tion, "is now ignorant, that France, if loyally defended in 1814, at all the points of its territory, would have been the tomb of its devastators. They are only formidable for those who suffer themselves to be frightened with threats, which seldom could have been followed by any consequence. If more real forces penetrate into some of our departments, let obstacles of every kind multiply on their passage; let their convoys-their detachments be destroyed, or cut off during its march; let active correspondence be kept up everywhere; let the military chiefs promptly receive intelligence of the least news. Let the inhabitants of the country dispute, even along the defiles, the roads, the marshes, the passes, the hollow roads. This war, with out danger to those who know the localities, honourable and useful to the citizen who defends his property, will be disastrous for the foreigner ignorant of the land and language. Let the smallest town-let insulated houses, mills, enclosures, become, by the bra very, industry, and intelligence of its defenders, posts capable of retarding the enemy. Let the gates and the walls of the towns be repaired; let the bridges be fortified and defended; let the example of Chalons, of St John de Losne, of Langres, of Compeigne, &c. inflame the emulation of all the cities; let them all be disposed to deserve, at time of need, the same eulogiums from their sovereign-the same gratitude from their country! When that is in danger, every magistrate is leader and captain-every citizen is a soldier." The task of calling out to arms the inhabitants, and inforcing the necessary preparations for defence, was committed to extraordinary commissioners dispatched to the different military departments of France, to whom the emperor added lieutenants-general, commissioners of high police, and other functionaries, fit to give the necessary impulse to the minds of the people, and to subdue all opposition by persuasion or violence. Many of these were revolutionists, whom Buonaparte was well pleased at once to employ in their own sphere, and to get rid of their presence at Paris. Jean de Bry, who, at an early period of the revolution, proposed to raise a corps of assassins, to the number of five hundred, armed with pistols and poniards, for the murder of all kings, was sent to Besançon. Pons de Verdun, a sçavant, who employed his early taste for letters in composing devices for the pastry and sweet-meats of his father, an eminent confectioner, had now the more exalted task of calling to arms the inhabitant of Lyons. David, more infamous for his cruelties as a member of the committee of public safety than respected as an artist, was dispatched to Besançon, in aid of Dumoulard, who had the same destination. Choudieu, Lecointre-Puiravault, Lamarque, and Moreau, (all four re gicides) were employed on similar missions. Under the direction of such experienced agents, committees of research were organised in the departments, in many towns and villages the tree of liberty was again planted,the lower classes were embodied under the name of free corps, or federates, and to these men, drunk as they were in mind and body with brandy, treason, and atheism, was held out the prospect of licensed rapine, in case the higher ranks did not take a part sufficiently active in repelling the enemy. To the eyes of these worthy citizens the good days seemed fast returning, when wealth or title of themselves constituted a traitor, and profligate indigence a patriot. The chief purpose of enrolling these corps,whom even Buonaparte feared actually to employ, was to intimidate the national guards, a body comprehending the proprietors and householders of the kingdom, and incline them rather to submit to the decrees by which they were declared moveable, and liable to be marched from their own districts for garrison service in the frontier places, than to provoke the government to let loose be blood-hounds of 1793, whom Buonaparte thus held ready in leash. But the expedient did not answer the end proposed; and the wisdom of that political foresight was now seen, which had announced that the apprehension of foreign war would divide, instead of uniting, the French people. Those who had but feebly seconded the Duke of Angouleme and his heroic consort, or had been tardy in rising to arms at the call of the Duke of Bourbon, were now driven into active resistance to government, goaded by personal appre hension of revolutionary measures, and of seeing themselves and their sons hurried to war under decrees as peremptory as those of the conscription, though bearing another name. The disaffection to Napoleon's government VOL. VIII. PART I. became vehement in proportion to the personal danger and privation in which it involved individuals, and they who' would willingly have remained in neutrality, showed a determined aversion to the side which endeavoured to force them into the field. In the northern departments, and in Brittany, the disaffection of the people assumed the appearance of a sullen and dogged stubbornness, without much active resistance. The national guard refused to come forth on the summons, and, if compelled by a stronger force, instantly deserted their standard, and went home so soon as they could get an opportunity; so that a battalion which had mustered six hundred upon their parade, dwindled to a fifth of that number before they had marched two leagues towards their destination. In the department of the Garde, a band of royalists displayed the white flag, and openly took the field. Armed bodies of refractory recruits traversed the departments of the Maine and Loire, and of the Lower Loire. The tri-coloured flag was destroyed, and the tree of liberty cut down in several departments. Committees of royalists were formed in the principal towns which corresponded with each other, and with Ghent ; La Vendee threatened a general rising; and in general the public disposition, in many departments, was hostile to Buonaparte, and threatened, at least, to obstruct the means on which he had reckoned for the defence of the kingdom. The reports made to Buonaparte from the confidential officers sent into the different departments, which fell into the hands of the Prussians after his defeat, and were made public, represent in general the state of the public mind as highly unfavourable to the emperor. This state of things was strongly painted by Fouché, May 7. in a report to the empe ror, which seemed to invite him, by stronger and more severe penalties, to repress the royalists. Yet, such has been the versatile conduct of this statesman, that, while reading his Memorial, and considering what has since taken place, we are tempted to conjecture that these communications might, perhaps, be made as much for the meridian of Ghent as of Paris. If they told Buonaparte his danger, they explained to Louis his grounds of hope; and Napoleon always considered the publication of that report at such a crisis as made with the premeditated intention of prejudicing his affairs, and encouraging the malcontents, by letting them know their strength. Fretted by external dangers, and internal disturbances, by the degrading condescension of appearing each, night before a mob, who familiarly hailed him as Pere la Violette, and, above all, by the necessity of humouring the philosophical members of his cabinet, now engaged in compounding a constitution to excel all that the invention of preceding experimentalists had been able to produce, to rid himself at once of occupations so galling to his haughty disposition, Napoleon suddenly withdrew himself from the palace of the Tuilleries to that of the Elysee-Bourbon, summoned around him his military adherents, and seemed on a sudden to be once more the emperor he had been before his abdication. One of the first exercises of his freedom was to save his ministers all further trouble about a con April 22. stitution, by presenting his subjects with an act emanating directly from the emperor's own authority, under the singular title of "An additional Act to the Constitutions of the Empire." There were two anomalies in this important measure. First, The con. stitution was made to flow from the pure grace and favour of the emperor, whereas one principal objection to that of the king, which had been so long and so loudly urged as an aggression on the majesty of the people, was the similar circumstance of its appearance in the shape of a royal charter instead of a national compact. Nay, the Champ de Mai had been summoned for the very purpose (according to the decrees from Lyons) of considering and adopting the necessary amendments of the constitution. But Buonaparte now plainly foresaw, that his new ministers and he were likely to differ in opinion upon the terms of these amendments, and he judged it best, though at the risk of being charged with inconsistency and breach of promise, to take such steps as might secure this important subject from becoming the topic of debate in an assembly, where the jacobins were likely to outnumber the imperialists. Secondly, In terming this new ba sis of his government, an Additional Act to the Constitutions of the Empire, Buonaparte seemed to sanction his huge previous mass of organic laws, so termed, which amounts to several folios, many of the enactments being contradictory of each other, and few of them in the spirit of this scheme of a free government, which was attached to them as an appendix. The following abridgment of the Additional Act will gratify the reader's curiosity. This document contains the following declarations. The legislative power resides in the The Emperor and two Chambers. Chamber of Peers is hereditary, and the Emperor names them. Their number is unlimited. The Second Chamber is elected by the people, and is to consist of 629 members-none are to be under 25 years. The President is appointed by the members, but approved of by the · Emperor. Members to be paid at the rate settled by the Constituent Assembly. It is to be renewed every five years. The Emperor may prorogue, adjourn, or dissolve the House of Representatives. Sittings to be public. be innovated upon under any pretence; whereas the Additional Act, leaving Buonaparte's former mass of contradictory laws unrepealed, and even in some measure confirming them, was liable to be explained, limited, and controuled by the old imperial decrees, which were, both in tone and spirit, so inconsistent with The Electoral Colleges are main- national liberty. These objections tained. Land tax and direct taxes to be voted only for a year; indirect may be for several years. No levy of men for the army, nor any exchange of territory, but by a law. Taxes to be proposed by the Chamber of Representatives. Ministers to be responsible. Judges to be irremovable. Juries to be established. Right of petition is established-freedom of worship-inviolability of property. The last article says, that "the French people declare that they do not mean to delegate the power of restoring the Bourbons, or any prince of that family, even in case of the exclusion of the imperial dynasty." In its essential particulars, this skeleton of a constitution not only differed widely from the imperial code, to which it was a supplement, but moreover closely resembled, in every essential particular, the charter of Louis XVIII., for which it was substituted, and afforded a proof to all reflecting men, that the object attained, or to be attained by France in this revolution, was no increase of national liberty, but only the exchange of a pacific king for an ambitious conqueror, under all the additional chances of encroachment on their freedom, and the absolute certainty of a dreadful foreign war. It was equally evident, that the royal charter, subsisting as a separate and entire national document, could not were made by the constitutionalists. The more determined republicans, besides their particular objections to an upper house, which the emperor could fill with his own minions, so as effectually to controul the representatives of the people, found the proposed constitution utterly devoid of the salt which should savour it. There was no acknowledgment of abstract principles; no dissertation concerning the rights of government and the governed; no metaphysical discussions on the origin of laws; and they were as much mortified and disappointed as the zealot who hears a discourse on practical morality, when he expected a sermon on the abstract points of theology. The unfortunate Additional Act became the subject of attack and raillery on all sides; and was esteemed to possess in so slight a degree the principle of durability, that a bookseller being asked for a copy by a customer, replied, He did not deal in periodical publications. It was necessary, however, that Buonaparte should proceed with the assembly of the Champ de Mai. It was true, that the two objects proposed as the reason of this worshipful convocation, were now both out of the question; for there was no chance of the deputed electors receiving the empress and her son, and the second point, of chusing a constitution, had already been managed by the emperor without their assistance. But they might accept this constitution, and wear fealty to it; a limitation of the privileges of the Champ de Mai, which would cut short all chance of disagrecable discussion, and at the same time assign them some ostensible purpose of assembling, and thus secure to the busy-bodies of Paris an imposing spectacle. The electoral bodies were, therefore, appointed to convene, and each Frenchman of mature age was invited to inscribe his vote for or against acceptance of the Additional Act. As these registers were entirely under the management of trusty persons; as there was no assurance whatever could be had against the same vote being repeatedly given, or the same person inscribing a dozen of different names, the whole of this ceremony was considered by the French as a mere farce, such as had been played off when Buonaparte had in somewhat the same manner collected the sense of the nation on his being made Consul for life and Emperor. It was remembered, that the maire of a commune had on one of these occasions thus reported the votes: "There are in the com mune 260 voters. On the day appointed for examining the register, it was found no one had enrolled his name. Their silence must be held as an acquiescence, on their part, in the proposition, that Buonaparte shall be Emperor. For myself, I vote in the negative; and thus the votes will be 259 affirmative to one negative." Yet though the collecting votes on the Additional Act was thus ridiculed, many royalists took the opportunity to insert their dissent from the measure. Mons. de Kergolay had the hardihood to publish his solemn protest against the article disinheriting the Bourbons, not only as an attack upon the liberty of the French, but because he considered the restoration of that dynasty as the only mode of restoring happiness to the nation. Such instances of boldness were overlooked, because they gave an air of fairness to the mode of voting; but care was taken to overpower them by a majority, however obtained, and for that purpose to collect, by beat of drum, the votes even of the lowest labourers, of do * The following jeu d'esprit was circulated on the same occasion. Vote, with Reasons assigned, inscribed at the Prefectureship of the Seine, on May 1, 1815. (From a Paper, printed and secretly distributed at Paris.) "I, the undersigned, in virtue of the part of the Sovereignty which was promised to me in 1792, of which I was swindled in 1800, and solemnly robbed by an organic Senatus Consultum in 1814, which was restored to me by a proclamation of the 1st of March 1815, which was again taken from me by an additional act of the 22d, and which I shall take back, as soon as I am the strongest, if I think it worth the trouble "I reject the additional act to the constitutions, the said constitutions and all that has followed them down to this additional act, and also all that shall follow it. "Imprimis, Because Napoleon himself acknowledges that he has no title to govern, except that of a dictatorship imposed by force, and that the right of a conqueror is not that of a legislator. Item, Because Buonaparte's liberty is a pleasantry for which I have no relish. Item, Because Buonaparte's equality is that of belots and galley slaves. Item, Because the peerage of Buonaparte is a saturnal assemblage at which the heart revolts. Item, Because the hereditary succession of Buonaparte's peerage is a gratuitous insult to other nations. Item, Because permission to exercise the right of thinking, speaking and writing, under Buonaparte, can only be a snare. Item, Because the vote of the people would be illusory. Item, Because the vote of the public gendarmerie will be ridiculous. Item, Because the vote of the army will be contra |