IINTRODUCTORY
The French Revolution, of which—philosophers regarding it as still unfinished—this book is really a chapter, produced a greater dislocation of individuals and classes than had been known in modern times. It scattered thousands of Frenchmen over Europe, some in fact as far as America and India, while, on the other hand, it attracted men of all nationalities to France. It was mainly a centrifugal, but it was partly a centripetal force, especially during the Empire; never before or since was France so much as then the focus of political and social life. Men of all ranks shared in both these movements. If princes and nobles were driven from France there were some who were attracted thither even in the early stages of the Revolution, while Napoleon later on drew around him a galaxy of foreign satellites.
To begin with the centrifugal action, history furnishes no parallel to such an overturn of thrones and flight of monarchs. With the exception of England, protected by the sea, Scandinavia and Russia by distance, and Turkey by Oriental lethargy, every dynasty of Europe was shaken or shattered by thevolcano. The Bourbons became wanderers on the face of the earth. LouisXVI.’s two brothers went hither and thither before finding a secure resting-place on British soil. The elder, ‘Monsieur,’ Comte de Provence (afterwards LouisXVIII.), fled from Paris simultaneously with his crowned brother, but, more fortunate than poor Louis, safely reached Belgium. The younger, Comte d’Artois (afterwards CharlesX.), had preceded him by nine months. Both re-entered France in 1792 with the German and Royalist invaders, but had soon to retreat with them. Monsieur betook himself first to Ham in Westphalia, and next to Verona, but the Doge of Venice, fearful of displeasing revolutionary France, ‘invited’ him to withdraw. Russian hospitality likewise proved ephemeral, but in England, first at Gosfield, then at Wanstead, and lastly at Hartwell, he was able quietly to await the downfall of the Corsican usurper. D’Artois found halting-places at Venice, Mantua, Brussels, and St. Petersburg, and for a few days he was a second time on French soil in the island of Yeu; but the failure of the expedition to western France soon obliged him to recross the Channel, where Holyrood and eventually London afforded him a refuge. Of the jealousies of these two exiled princes, and of the mortifications and dissensions of their retinues, it is needless to speak. The Duke of Orleans (the future Louis Philippe), deserting the Republican army along with Dumouriez, after teaching in a school in Switzerland, and after a visit to America, where he spent a night in an Indian wigwam, also repaired to England. There he was doomedto long years of inactivity, though he would fain have joined the English forces in Spain, in which case, as having fought against France, he could scarcely have grasped the French crown. The Duc de Bourbon likewise settled in England, and it would have been well had his unfortunate son, the Duc d’Enghien, followed his example. The king’s two aunts, one of them the reputed mother of the Comte de Narbonne, himself escorting them and destined to ten years of exile, found their way to Rome, but driven thence by the French, after many buffetings they ended their wanderings and their lives at Trieste.
These banished French princes had the doubtful consolation of seeing other regal or princely personages equally storm-tost. The Statthalter of Holland had to pass many years of banishment in England, and even stooped to soliciting a pecuniary indemnity from Napoleon. The Austrian and Prussian monarchs, though not actually driven out of their dominions, saw their capitals occupied by French armies, and had to bow to the stern dictates of the Conqueror. The rulers of German principalities were swept away by the hurricane. The Spanish royal family were consigned to the custody of Talleyrand at Valençay. The Portuguese princes took refuge in Brazil. Italian monarchs fared no better. The sovereigns of Piedmont had to retire to the island of Sardinia, the only possession remaining to them. The King of Naples was likewise driven from his continental dominions, British protection ensuring him a footing in Sicily. Italian dukes were rudely supplanted by Napoleon’s relatives or other puppets.FerdinandIII.of Tuscany was driven to Vienna, though subsequently assigned a duchy in Germany. Even the Papacy, which had long been unscathed by war or revolution, was overwhelmed by the current. Forced away from Rome, one Pope died in the French fortress of Valence, while another became a prisoner at Savona.
In France not merely the princes, but almost the entire nobility, were fugitives. England, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia were inundated with aristocrats, who at first, counting on a speedy and triumphant return, formed little colonies, in one of which Fanny Burney found a husband; but the exhaustion of their resources soon scattered them hither and thither. Some were descendants of Jacobite refugees, who found shelter in the very country whence their ancestors had fled. Adversity, in this as in other cases, brought out the best qualities of some and the worst of others. Frivolity and gravity, self-denial and selfishness, heroism and poltroonery, intrigue and probity, honour and unscrupulousness, existed side by side. Some formed royalist corps subsidised by foreign governments, or actually joined foreign armies, persuading themselves that they were thus fighting not against France but against a usurpation. The few who went to America, whether from choice, like the epicure Brillat Savarin, or from compulsion like Talleyrand, were spared this sad necessity of accepting foreign alms or serving foreign states. The Comte d’Estaing took office under an Indian rajah. Reduced to penury, those who remained in the Old World resorted to everyconceivable expedient. The women were naturally the greatest sufferers. Delicate fingers which had never done a stroke of work had to busy themselves in dressing dolls, in embroidery, in flower or portrait painting, in nursing the sick, and even in milking cows and making butter for sale. Men brought up in luxury deemed themselves fortunate if they could earn a livelihood as journalists, translators, or teachers. More frequently they had to become book-keepers or tailors, to keep wine shops, to sing at music-halls, to act as prompters at theatres, and even to be water-carriers. Some, alas! with the connivance at least for a time of their princes, forged assignats. Welcomed in some quarters, mobbed or even expelled as vagabonds in others, they had to exchange palaces for cottages, sumptuous diet for the roughest fare, jewels and finery for rags. No wonder that humiliation and anguish drove some to suicide, and the lives of many others must have been shortened by privations. Yet many, with the traditional light-heartedness of Frenchmen,
‘Laughed the sense of misery away.’
‘Laughed the sense of misery away.’
‘Laughed the sense of misery away.’
‘Laughed the sense of misery away.’
Besides thenoblesse, which included the episcopate, there were thousands of priests and hundreds of nuns, who, fleeing from relentless persecution, found succour from Protestant governments and Protestant philanthropy. There were also ex-deputies and publicists, whom the dungeon, and probably the guillotine, would otherwise have claimed. Lally Tollendal, the younger Mirabeau, Mounier, and Montlosier, had sat in the National or Constituent Assembly. Mallet du Pan,Etienne Dumont, Antraigues, driven to suicide, Lafayette, consigned to an Austrian fortress, and Dumouriez, offering military counsels to the English, may also be mentioned. It need hardly be said that wealthy foreigners like Quintin Craufurd, who had become numerous in Paris before the Revolution, were frightened away, leaving their property to be confiscated, for the Jacobins did not even recognise their right to quit France, which had become not merely inhospitable but dangerous. Not until the Consulate and the Empire did France again attract wealthy foreigners, or recover a portion of its then much impoverished nobility.
As for the immigration, though far less important in numbers and quality, it was not inconsiderable. Men of all nationalities hurried to Paris between 1789 and 1792 to see or serve the Revolution. There were English men and women like Paine (or shall we reckon him an American?), George Grieve, General Money, Thomas Christie, John Oswald, Helen Williams, and Mary Wollstonecraft. There were Americans like Barlow, Eustace, Paul Jones, and Joshua Barney; Germans like Cloots, Trenck, and George Forster; Belgians and Dutchmen like de Kock, father of the novelist, and Proly, a natural son of the Austrian statesman Kaunitz; Poles like Wittinghoff; Russians like Strogonoff; Italians like Rotondo, Cerutti, and Buonarotti; Spaniards like Olavide and Miranda. Most of these men embraced the cause of the Revolution as a religion, and were quite ready to fight in its behalf, in defence as they imagined of liberty and enlightenment, even against their native countries. Someof them paid the penalty of their enthusiasm by the dungeon or the guillotine. It is true that when Napoleon seized the reins such illusions could scarcely have remained, but even then there were numerous foreigners eager to serve him for the sake of lucre or adventure, not to speak of Irish refugees and Poles, whom he lured by the expectation of achieving their independence. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, little foreseeing his marriage with our Princess Charlotte or his elevation to the crown of Belgium, was anxious to become one of his aides-de-camp. Some men fought by turns for and against him. The Revolution indeed, though it ended by making Europe nationalist, made it for a time cosmopolitan. Napoleon did much, moreover, to eradicate patriotism, especially in the military class. Hence Bernadotte was not the only soldier who changed sides from personal pique or according to the prospects of victory, and he did not even imagine that by his appearance as an invader he would disqualify himself for supplanting Napoleon on the French throne. Jomini, a Swiss, after serving Napoleon in high rank, offered his sword to Russia, though Napoleon was compelled to acquit him of having treacherously revealed his military secrets. And Talleyrand, while accepting Napoleon’s pay, intrigued with his foes, doubtless salving his conscience, if indeed he had a conscience, with the notion that he was thus promoting the interests of France. Few men were so scrupulous as the Duc de Richelieu, a future French statesman, in stipulating that Russia should not send him to fight against his countrymen. As to the rank and file, they had ofcourse no choice. Belgians, Dutchmen, Germans, Poles, Italians, had to join or combat French armies according to the political exigencies of the moment or the periphery of French rule. Napoleon’s armies were thus a medley of nationalities, and the only wonder is that defections so rarely occurred.
Such was the France, such the Europe, to which this book relates. It is a chapter in the history both of England and of Napoleon. We first see Englishmen pouring over to Paris during the interlude or truce of Amiens, to make or renew acquaintance with it after ten years of hostilities, or to recover confiscated property. Peers, M.P.’s, soldiers and sailors, philosophers, scholars, merchants, were all eager to see the young Corsican who had already accomplished so much and was evidently marked out to accomplish much more. We next see hundreds of these non-combatants detained for eleven years on the paltry pretext of their being liable to militia service at home, and in defiance of all international courtesies. We see some of them not merely shifted from place to place, now permitted to reside in Paris, now relegated to provincial towns, but actually incarcerated in fortresses. We find the British Government standing on principle, and declining to exchange the thousands of French captives for these unfortunates, though there were not wanting men who urged on it the expediency of stooping to deal with Napoleon as with a mountain brigand or a barbarous chief, especially as he was arbitrarily imprisoning without trial Frenchmen whom he suspected or feared. We meet with cases of crying heartlessness among thesedetentions, relieved only by a very rare gleam of humanity or magnanimity. We then see the sudden collapse of this gigantic tyranny and the liberation, as from an immense aviary suddenly thrown open, of grey-headed and despondent captives. This flight of caged birds is quickly followed by, we might almost say is coincident with, an influx of fresh visitors, mostly so unmindful of the past as to take for granted the stability of the restored monarchy. We see a few tourists repairing to Elba to get a glimpse of the dethroned Emperor, one or two of them sagacious enough to forebode that reappearance on French soil which was to scare away nearly all their countrymen. The curtain falls on the Hundred Days, but it is just raised to show us Napoleon pathetically trying with little success at St. Helena to master the language of his jailers.
The centenary of the Peace of Amiens seemed a suitable occasion for writing, not a political history of that truce, for on this there is nothing new to be said, but an account of its social aspects, of the visits paid to Paris by Englishmen, which had never before been so numerous, of the impression made on each other by guests and hosts, and of the experiences of those who on the resumption of hostilities found themselves detained as prisoners. French writers have shown how Napoleon treated his own subjects; it completes the picture of him to see how he treated Englishmen, who never, except his guardians at St. Helena when jailer had become prisoner, came into such close relations with him. I may fairly claim to have broken new ground. It is true that I gave two brief chapters on this subjectin 1889 in myEnglishmen in the French Revolution, but I have since met in the French National Archives and elsewhere with a mass of additional materials which enable me to go into much greater detail. The starting-point of my researches was the discovery, for which and for other communications I am indebted to M. Léonce Grasilier, of a register of the principal foreign arrivals.[1]I have also been favoured with information from three correspondents in reply to questions respecting their ancestors, and theDictionary of National Biographyhas of course much assisted me, though in some instances the dates of birth given or left in doubt by it may be supplied or corrected by the register above mentioned, while visits to Paris have sometimes escaped the notice of its contributors. I have likewise consulted at the Record Office the despatches of Anthony Merry, the predecessor of Lord Whitworth at the Paris Embassy, though these, like the Whitworth series edited by Mr. Oscar Browning, seldom stoop from political to social incidents. But the most vivid picture of the life and treatment of the captives is gained from the police bulletin daily prepared for Napoleon and now preserved in the French Archives.[2]They also throw a flood of light on the character of Napoleon’s internal rule, yet, so far as I know, no French historian has as yet utilised them, and I have every reason to believe that I am the first English writer who has consulted them. They havefurnished me with most of the data respecting the captives.
As for printed sources, the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission have thus far brought to light but few letters written by visitors to their friends, yet many of these may still be in existence. The literature of the Verdun and other captives is disappointing. Sturt, Forbes, Pinkerton, Lawrence, and Blayney necessarily give individual experiences rather than a general history of the detentions. Not one of these writers, moreover, ventured on keeping a journal, which would have been obviously unsafe, and some of them, publishing their recollections while comrades were still in captivity, naturally omitted details which might have lessened the pity felt in England by revealing the failings of a small minority, or which might have goaded the jailers to increased rigour. The police bulletins, on the other hand, written for perusal by one man, a man whom it was dangerous to attempt to hoodwink, had no reason for reticence.