Вальтер Скотт
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V

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CHAPTER LXXXVI

Buonaparte's attempts to conciliate Britain – Plot to carry off Maria Louisa fails – State of feeling in France – The Army – The Jacobins – The Constitutionalists – Fouché and Siêyes made Peers – Freedom of the Press granted, and outraged – Independent conduct of Comté, editor of Le Censeur – Disaffections among the lower orders – Part of these assemble before the Tuileries, and applaud the Emperor – Festival of the Federates – New Constitution – It is received with dissatisfaction – Meeting of the Champ de Mai to ratify it – Buonaparte's Address to the Chambers of Peers and Deputies – The spirit of Jacobinism predominant in the latter.

MARIA LOUISA

While Murat was struggling and sinking under his evil fate, Buonaparte was actively preparing for the approaching contest. His first attempt, as we have already seen, was to conciliate the allied powers. To satisfy Great Britain, he passed an act abolishing the slave trade, and made some regulations concerning national education, in which he spoke highly of the systems of Bell and Lancaster. These measures were favourably construed by some of our legislators; and that they were so, is a complete proof that Buonaparte understood the temper of our nation. To suppose that, during his ten months of retirement, his mind was actively employed upon the miseries of the negroes, or the deplorable state of ignorance to which his own measures, and the want of early instruction, had reduced the youth of France, would argue but little acquaintance with his habits of ambition. To believe, on the contrary, that he would, at his first arrival in France, make any apparent sacrifices which might attract the good-will of his powerful and dangerous neighbours, is more consonant with his schemes, his interest, and his character. The path which he chose to gain the esteem of Britain, was by no means injudicious. The abolition of negro slavery, and the instruction of the poor, have (to the honour of our legislature) been frequent and anxious subjects of deliberation in the House of Commons; and to mankind, whether individually or collectively, no species of flattery is more pleasing than that of assent and imitation. It is not a little to the credit of our country, that the most avowed enemy of Britain strove to cultivate our good opinion, not by any offers of national advantage but by appearing to concur in general measures of benevolence, and attention to the benefit of society. Yet, upon the whole, the character of Napoleon was too generally understood, and the purpose of his apparent approximation to British sentiments, too obviously affected, for serving to make any general or serious impression in his favour.

With Austria, Napoleon acted differently. He was aware that no impression could be made on the Emperor Francis, or his minister Metternich, and that it had become impossible, with their consent, that he should fulfil his promise of presenting his wife and son to the people on the Champ de Mai. Stratagem remained the only resource; and some Frenchmen at Vienna, with those in Maria Louisa's train, formed a scheme of carrying off the Empress of France and her child. The plot was discovered and prevented, and the most public steps were immediately taken, to show that Austria considered all ties with Buonaparte as dissolved for ever. Maria Louisa, by her father's commands, laid aside the arms and liveries of her husband, hitherto displayed by her attendants and carriages, and assumed those of the house of Austria. This decisive event put an end to every hope so long cherished by Napoleon, that he might find some means of regaining the friendship of his father-in-law.

Nor did the other powers in Europe show themselves more accessible to his advances. He was, therefore, reduced to his own partisans in the French nation, and those won over from other parties, whom he might be able to add to them.

The army had sufficiently shown themselves to be his own, upon grounds which are easily appreciated. The host of public official persons, to whom the name under which they exercised their offices was indifferent, provided the salary continued to be attached to them, formed a large and influential body. And although we, who have never, by such mutations of our political system, been put to the trial of either abandoning our means of living, or submitting to a change of government, may, on hearing quoted names of respectability and celebrity who adopted the latter alternative, exclaim against French versatility, a glance at Britain during the frequent changes of the 17th century, may induce us to exchange the exclamation of poor France! for that of poor human nature! The professors of Cromwell's days, who piously termed themselves followers of Providence, because they complied with every change that came uppermost; and the sect of time-servers, including the honest patriot, who complained at the Restoration that he had complied with seven forms of government during the year, but lost his office by being too late of adhering to the last – would have made in their day a list equally long, and as entertaining, as the celebrated Dictionnaire de Girouettes. In matters dependent upon a sudden breeze of sentiment, the mercurial Frenchman is more apt to tack about than the phlegmatic and slowly-moved native of Britain; but when the steady trade-wind of interest prevails for a long season, men in all nations and countries show the same irresistible disposition to trim their sails by it; and in politics as in morals, it will be well to pray against being led into temptation.

STATE OF PARTIES

Besides those attached to him by mere interest, or from gratitude and respect for his talents, Napoleon had now among his adherents, or rather allies, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity, the Jacobin party, who had been obliged, though unwillingly, to adopt him as the head of a government, which they hoped to regenerate. To these were to be added a much larger and more respectable body, who, far from encouraging his attempt, had testified themselves anxious to oppose it to the last, but who, conceiving the cause of the Bourbons entirely lost, were willing to adhere to Buonaparte, on condition of obtaining a free constitution for France. Many of these acted, of course, on mixed motives; but if we were asked to form a definition of them, we should be induced to give the same, which, laying aside party spirit, we should ascribe to a right English Whig, whom we conceive to be a man of sense and moderation, a lover of laws and liberty, whose chief regard to particular princes and families is founded on what he apprehends to be the public good; and who differs from a sensible Tory so little, that there is no great chance of their disputing upon any important constitutional question, if it is fairly stated to both. Such, we believe, is the difference betwixt rational Constitutionalists and Royalists in France; and, undoubtedly, while all the feelings of the latter induced them to eye with abhorrence the domination of a usurper, there must have been many of the former, who, fearing danger to the independence of France from the intervention of foreign powers, conceived, that by advocating the cause of Napoleon, they were in some degree making a virtue of necessity, and playing an indifferent game with as much skill as the cards they held would permit. Many patriotic and sensible men, who had retained a regard for liberty during all the governments and all the anarchies which had subsisted for twenty years, endeavoured now to frame a system of government, grounded upon something like freedom, upon the difficulties of Buonaparte. Pressed as he was from abroad, and unsupported at home, save by the soldiery, he would, they conceived, be thrown by necessity under the protection of the nation, and obliged to recruit his adherents by complying with public opinion, and adopting a free government. Under this persuasion a great number of such characters, more or less shaded by attachment to a moderate and limited monarchy, were prepared to acknowledge Buonaparte's re-established authority, in so far as he should be found to deserve it, by concessions on his part.

The conduct and arguments of another portion of the friends of the constitution, rather resembled that which might have been adopted in England by moderate and intelligent Tories. Such men were not prepared to resign the cause of their lawful monarch, because fortune had for a time declared against him. They were of opinion, that to make a constitution permanent, the monarch must have his rights ascertained and vindicated, as well as those of the people; and that if a usurper were to be acknowledged upon any terms, however plausible, so soon as he had cut his way to success by his sword, the nation would be exposed to perpetual revolutions. Louis, these men might argue, had committed no crime whatever; he was only placed in circumstances which made some persons suppose he might possibly be tempted to meditate changes on the constitution, and on the charter which confirmed it. There was meanness in deserting a good and peaceable king at the command of a revolted army, and a discarded usurper. They regretted that their prince must be replaced by foreign bayonets; yet it was perhaps better that a moderate and peaceful government should be restored even thus, than that the French nation should continue to suffer under the despotic tyranny of their own soldiery. Those reasoners ridiculed the idea of a free constitution, which was to be generated betwixt Buonaparte, who, in his former reign, never allowed freedom of thought, word, or action, to exist unrepressed, and the old Revolutionists, who, during their period of power, could be satisfied with no degree of liberty until they destroyed every compact which holds civil society together, and made the country resemble one great bedlam, set on fire by the patients, who remained dancing in the midst of the flames.

Such we conceive to have been the principles on which wise and moderate men on either side acted during this distracted period. It is easy to suppose, that their opinions must have been varied by many more and less minute shades, arising from temperament, predilections, prejudices, passions, and feelings of self-interest, and that they were on either side liable to be pushed into exaggeration, or, according to the word which was formed to express that exaggeration – into Ultraism.

Meantime, Napoleon did all that was possible to conciliate the people's affection, and to show himself sincerely desirous of giving France the free constitution which he had promised. He used the advice of Carnot, Siêyes, and Fouché, and certainly profited by several of their lessons. He made it, notwithstanding, a condition, that Carnot and Siêyes should accept each a title and a seat in his House of Peers, to show that they were completely reconciled to the Imperial government; and both the ancient republicans condescended to exchange the bonnet rouge, for a coronet, which, considering their former opinions, sate somewhat awkwardly upon their brows.

But although the union of the Imperialists and popular party had been cemented by mutual hatred of the Bourbons, and was still kept together by apprehension of the King's adherents within, and his allies on the exterior, seeds of discord were soon visible between the Emperor and the popular leaders. While the former was eager once more to wield with full energy the sceptre he had recovered, the latter were continually reminding him, that he had only assumed it in a limited and restricted capacity, as the head of a free government, exercising, indeed, its executive power, but under the restraint of a popular constitution. Napoleon, in the frequent disputes which arose on these important points, was obliged to concede to the demagogues the principles which they insisted upon. But then, for the safety of the state, involved in foreign and domestic dangers, he contended it was necessary to invest the chief magistrate with a vigour beyond the law, a dictatorial authority, temporary in its duration, but nearly absolute in its extent, as had been the manner in the free states of antiquity, when the republic was in imminent danger. Carnot and Fouché, on the other hand, considered, that although it seemed natural, and might be easy, to confer such power at the present moment, the resumption of it by the nation, when it was once vested in the hands of Buonaparte, would be a hopeless experiment. The Emperor, therefore, and his ministers, proceeded to their mutual tasks with no mutual confidence; but, on the contrary, with jealousy, thinly veiled by an affectation of deference on the side of Buonaparte, and respect on that of his counsellors.

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS

The very first sacrifice which the Emperor gave to freedom proved an inconvenient one to his government. This was nothing less than the freedom of the press. It is true, that the influence of his minister of police managed by indirect means to get possession of most of the journals; so that of sixty writers, employed generally, if not constantly, in periodical composition, five only were now found friendly to the royal cause. The other pens, which a few days before described Napoleon as a species of Ogre, who had devoured the youth of France, now wrote him down a hero and a liberator. Still, when the liberty of the press was once established, it was soon found impossible to prevent it from asserting its right of utterance; and there were found authors to advocate the cause of the Bourbons, from principle, from caprice, from the love of contradiction.

Napoleon, who always showed himself sensitively alive to the public censure, established inspectors of the booksellers. The minister of police, a friend of liberty, but, as Compte, the editor of Le Censeur, neatly observed, only of liberty after the fashion of M. Fouché, used every art in his power to prevent the contagion of freedom from spreading too widely. This M. Compte was a loud, and probably a sincere advocate of freedom, and had been a promoter of Buonaparte's return, as likely to advance the good cause. Seeing the prevailing influence of the military, he published some severe remarks on the undue weight the army assumed in public affairs, which, he hesitated not to say, was bringing France to the condition of Rome, when the empire was disposed of by the Prætorian guards. This stung to the quick – the journal was seized by the police, and the minister endeavoured to palliate the fact in the Moniteur, by saying, that, though seized, it had been instantly restored. But Compte was not a man to be so silenced; he published a contradiction of the official statement, and declared that his journal had not been restored. He was summoned the next day before the prefect, alternately threatened and wheedled, upbraided at one moment with ungrateful resistance to the cause of the Emperor, and requested at the next to think of something in which government might serve him. Steeled against every proffer and entreaty, Compte only required to be permitted to profit by the restored liberty of the press; nor could the worthy magistrate make him rightly understand that when the Emperor gave all men liberty to publish what pleased themselves, it was under the tacit condition that it should also please the prefect and minister of police. Compte had the spirit to publish the whole affair.

In the meanwhile, proclamations of Louis, forbidding the payment of taxes, and announcing the arrival of 1,200,000 men under the walls of Paris, covered these walls every night in spite of the police. A newspaper, called the Lily, was also secretly, but generally circulated, which advocated the royal cause. In the better classes of society, where Buonaparte was feared and hated, lampoons, satires, pasquinades, glided from hand to hand, turning his person, ministers, and government, into the most bitter ridicule. Others attacked him with eloquent invective, and demanded what he had in common with the word Liberty, which he now pretended to connect with his reign. He was, they said, the sworn enemy of liberty, the assassin of the Republic, the destroyer of French freedom, which had been so dearly bought; the show of liberty which he held, was a trick of legerdemain, executed under protection of his bayonets. Such was his notion of liberty when it destroyed the national representation at St. Cloud – Such was the freedom he gave when he established an Oriental despotism in the enlightened kingdom at France. Such, when abolishing all free communication of sentiments among citizens, and proscribing every liberal and philosophical idea under the nickname of Ideology. "Can it be forgotten," they continued, "that Heaven and Hell are not more irreconcilable ideas, than Buonaparte and Liberty? – The very word Freedom," they said, "was proscribed under his iron reign, and only first gladdened the ears of Frenchmen after twelve years of humiliation and despair, on the happy restoration of Louis XVIII. – Ah, miserable impostor!" they exclaimed, "when would he have spoke of liberty, had not the return of Louis familiarized us with freedom and peace." The spirit of disaffection spread among certain classes of the lower ranks. The market-women (dames des halles,) so formidable during the time of the Fronde, and in the early years of the Revolution, for their opposition to the court, were now royalists, and, of course, clamorous on the side of the party they espoused. They invented, or some loyal rhymer composed for them, a song,¹²³ the burden of which demanded back the King, as their father of Ghent. They ridiculed, scolded, and mobbed the commissaries of police, who endeavoured to stop these musical expressions of disaffection; surrounded the chief of their number, danced around him, and chanted the obnoxious burden, until Fouché being ashamed to belie the new doctrines of liberty of thought, speech, and publication, his agents were instructed to leave these Amazons undisturbed on account of their political sentiments.

While Buonaparte was unable to form an interest in the saloons, and found that even the dames des halles were becoming discontented, he had upon his side the militia of the suburbs; those columns of pikemen so famous in the Revolution, whose furious and rude character added to the terrors, if not to the dignity, of his reign. Let us not be accused of a wish to depreciate honest industry, or hold up to contempt the miseries of poverty. It is not the poverty, but the ignorance and the vice of the rabble of great cities, which render them always disagreeable, and sometimes terrible. They are entitled to protection from the laws, and kindness from the government; but he who would use them as political engines, invokes the assistance of a blatant beast with a thousand heads, well furnished with fangs to tear and throats to roar, but devoid of tongues to speak reason, ears to hear it, eyes to see it, or judgment to comprehend it.

For a little time after Buonaparte's return, crowds of artisans of the lowest order assembled under the windows of the Tuileries, and demanded to see the Emperor, whom, on his appearance, they greeted with shouts, as le Grand Entrepreneur, or general employer of the class of artisans, in language where the coarse phraseology of their rank was adorned with such flowers of rhetoric as the times of terror had coined. Latterly, the numbers of this assembly were maintained by a distribution of a few sous to the shouters.

However disgusted with these degrading exhibitions, Buonaparte felt he could not dispense with this species of force, and was compelled to institute a day of procession, and a solemn festival, in favour of this description of persons, who, from the mode in which they were enrolled, were termed Federates.

FESTIVAL OF THE FEDERATES

On 14th May, the motley and ill-arranged ranks which assembled on this memorable occasion, exhibited, in the eyes of the disgusted and frightened spectators, all that is degraded by habitual vice, and hardened by stupidity and profligacy. The portentous procession moved on along the Boulevards to the court of the Tuileries, with shouts, in which the praises of the Emperor were mingled with imprecations, and with the Revolutionary songs (long silenced in Paris,) – the Marseilloise Hymn, the Carmagnole, and the Day of Departure. The appearance of the men, the refuse of manufactories, of work-houses, of jails; their rags, their filth, their drunkenness; their ecstacies of blasphemous rage, and no less blasphemous joy, stamped them with the character of the willing perpetrators of the worst horrors of the Revolution. Buonaparte himself was judged, by close observers, to shrink with abhorrence from the assembly he himself had convoked. His guards were under arms, and the field artillery loaded, and turned on the Place de Carrousel, filled with the motley crowd, who, from the contrasted colour of the corn porters and charcoal-men, distinguished in the group, were facetiously called his Grey and Black Mousquetaires. He hasted to dismiss his hideous minions, with a sufficient distribution of praises and of liquor. The national guards conceived themselves insulted on this occasion, because compelled to give their attendance along with the Federates. The troops of the line felt for the degraded character of the Emperor. The haughty character of the French soldiers had kept them from fraternizing with the rabble, even in the cause of Napoleon. They had been observed, on the march from Cannes, to cease their cries of Vive l'Empereur, when, upon entering any considerable town, the shout was taken up by the mob of the place, and to suspend their acclamations, rather than mingle them with those of the pequins, whom they despised. They now muttered to each other, on seeing the court which Buonaparte seemed compelled to bestow on these degraded artisans, that the conqueror of Marengo and Wagram had sunk into the mere captain of a rabble. In short, the disgraceful character of the alliance thus formed between Buonaparte and the lees of the people, was of a nature incapable of being glossed over even in the flattering pages of the Moniteur, which, amidst a flourishing description of this memorable procession, was compelled to admit, that, in some places, the name of the Emperor was incongruously mingled with expressions and songs, which recalled an era unfortunately too famous.

Fretted by external dangers, and internal disturbances, and by the degrading necessity of appearing every night before a mob, who familiarly hailed him as Père le Violette, and, above all, galled by the suggestions of his philosophical counsellors, who, among other innovations, wished him to lay aside the style of Emperor for that of President, or Grand General of the Republic, Napoleon, to rid himself at once of occupations offensive to his haughty disposition, withdrew from the Tuileries to the more retired palace of the Elysée Bourbon, and seemed on a sudden to become once more the Emperor he had been before his abdication. Here he took into his own hands, with the assistance of Benjamin Constant, and other statesmen, the construction of a new constitution. Their system included all those checks and regulations which are understood to form the essence of a free government, and greatly resembled that granted by the Royal Charter.¹²⁴ Nevertheless, it was extremely ill received by all parties, but especially by those who expected from Napoleon a constitution more free than that which they had dissolved by driving Louis XVIII. from the throne. There were other grave exceptions stated against the scheme of government.

First, The same objection was stated against this Imperial grant which had been urged with so much vehemence against the royal charter, namely, that it was not a compact between the people and the sovereign, in which the former called the latter to the throne under certain conditions, but a recognition by the sovereign of the liberties of the people. The meeting of the Champ de Mai had indeed been summoned, (as intimated in the decrees from Lyons,) chiefly with the purpose of forming and adopting the new constitution; but, according to the present system, they were only to have the choice of adopting or rejecting that which Napoleon had prepared for them. The disappointment was great among those philosophers who desired "better bread than is made of wheat;" and could not enjoy liberty itself, unless it emanated directly from the will of the people, and was sanctioned by popular discussion. But Napoleon was determined that the convention of the 10th May should have no other concern in the constitution, save to accept it when offered. He would not intrust such an assembly with the revision of the laws by which he was to govern.

ADDITIONAL ACT

Secondly, This new constitution, though presenting an entirely new basis of government, was published under the singular title of an "Additional¹²⁵ Act to the Constitutions of the Emperor," and thereby constituted a sort of appendix to a huge mass of unrepealed organic laws, many of them inconsistent with the Additional Act in tenor and in spirit.

Those who had enjoyed the direct confidence of the Emperor while the treaty was framing, endeavoured to persuade themselves that Napoleon meant fairly by France, yet confessed they had found it difficult to enlighten his ideas on the subject of a limited monarchy. They felt, that though the Emperor might be induced to contract his authority, yet what remained in his own hand would be wielded as arbitrarily as ever; and likewise that he would never regard his ministers otherwise than as the immediate executors of his pleasure, and responsible to himself alone. He would still continue to transport his whole chancery at his stirrup, and transmit sealed orders to be executed by a minister whom he had not consulted on their import.¹²⁶

The Royalists triumphed on the publication of this Additional Act: "Was it for this," they said, "you broke your oaths, and banished your monarch, to get the same, or nearly similar laws, imposed on you by a Russian ukase or a Turkish firman, which you heretofore enjoyed by charter, in the same manner as your ancestors, called freemen by excellence, held their rights from their limited sovereigns; and for this have you exchanged a peaceful prince, whose very weakness was your security, for an ambitious warrior, whose strength is your weakness? For this have you a second time gone to war with all Europe – for the Additional Act and the Champ de Mai?"

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 control 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 doctrinal 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 principles of durability, that a bookseller being asked for a copy by a customer, replied, He did not deal in periodical publications.¹²⁷

Under these auspices the Champ de Mai was opened, and that it might be in all respects incongruous, it was held on the 1st of June.¹²⁸ Deputies were supposed to attend from all departments, not, as it had been latterly arranged, to canvass the new constitution, but to swear to observe it; and not to receive the Empress Maria Louisa and her son as the pledge of twenty years peace, but to behold the fatal eagles, the signal of instant and bloody war, distributed by the Emperor to the soldiers.

Napoleon and his brothers, whom he had once more collected around him, figured, in quaint and fantastic robes, in the Champ de Mai; he as Emperor, and they as princes of the blood – another subject of discontent to the Republicans. The report of the votes was made, the electors swore to the Additional Act, the drums rolled, the trumpets flourished, the cannon thundered. But the acclamations were few and forced. The Emperor seemed to view the scene as an empty pageant, until he was summoned to the delivery of the eagles to the various new-raised regiments; and then, amid the emblems of past, and, as might be hoped, the auguries of future victories, he was himself again. But, on the whole, the Champ de Mai, was, in the language of Paris, une pièce tombée, a condemned farce, which was soon to be succeeded by a bloody tragedy.

CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES

The meeting of the Chambers was the next subject of interest. The Chamber of Peers did not present, like the corresponding assembly in Britain, members of long descent, ample fortunes, independence of principle, and education corresponding to their rank of hereditary legislators. It consisted in the princes of Napoleon's blood royal, to whom was added Lucien, long estranged from his brother's councils, but who now, instigated by fraternal affection, or tired of literary leisure, having presented his epic poem to a thankless and regardless public, endeavoured to save his brother in his present difficulties, as by his courage and presence of mind he had assisted him during the revolution of Brumaire. There were about one hundred other dignitaries, more than one half of whom were military men, including two or three old Jacobins, such as Siêyes and Carnot, who had taken titles, decorations, and rank, inconsistently with the tenor of their whole life. The rest had been the creatures of Buonaparte's former reign, with some men of letters devoted to his cause, and recently ennobled. This body, which could have no other will than that of the Emperor, was regarded by the Republicans and Constitutionalists with jealousy, and by the citizens with contempt. Buonaparte himself expressed his opinion of it with something approaching the latter sentiment. He had scarce formed his tools, before he seems to have been convinced of their inefficacy, and of the little influence which they could exercise on the public mind.¹²⁹