In the space of three years, from 1826 to 1828, Charles X. named three governors for the Duke of Bordeaux. One, the Duke of Montmorency, never entered on his duties. The others were the Duke de Riviere and the Baron de Damas. The Duke of Montmorency was named in anticipation the 8th of January, 1826, although his task did not begin until the 29th of September. Mathieu de Montmorency, first Viscount and then Duke, was born in 1766. After having been through the war in America, he had adopted the ideas of Lafayette, and had been distinguished by his extreme liberalism. He took the oath of the Jeu de Paume, and was the first to give up the privileges derived from his birth on the celebrated night of the 4th of August. The 12th of July, 1791, he was one of the deputation that attended the solemn transfer of the ashes of Voltaire, and, August 27th, he sustained the proposition to decree the honors of the Pantheon to Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Petit Almanach des Grands Hommes de la Revolution, Rivarol wrote, not without irony:—
"The most youthful talent of the Assembly, he is still stammering his patriotism, but he already manages to make it understood, and the Republic sees in him all it wishes to see. It was necessary that Montmorency should appear popular for the Revolution to be complete, and a child alone could set this great example. The little Montmorency therefore devoted himself to the esteem of the moment, and combated aristocracy under the ferrule of the Abbe Sieyes."
Mathieu de Montmorency did not adhere to his revolutionary ideas. After the 10th of August, 1792, he withdrew to Switzerland, at Coppet, near his friend Madame de Stael. Under the Empire he held himself apart. He had become as conservative as he had been liberal, as religious as he had been Voltairian. Under the Restoration, he was one of the most convinced supporters of the throne and the altar. Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1821, he showed himself a distinguished diplomat, and during the session of 1822 made the Amende Honorable for what he called his former errors.
As he had always been sincere in his successive opinions, the Duke of Montmorency deserved general esteem. His profound piety, his unchanging gentleness, his exhaustless charity, made him a veritable saint. He was the complete type of the Christian nobleman. His name, his character, the very features of his countenance, were all in perfect harmony. The adversaries of the Revolution could not refrain from honoring this good man. On receiving the title of governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, he felt rewarded for the devotion and virtue of his whole life. But he regarded this grave employment as a heavy burden, "an immense and formidable honor, the terror of his feebleness, and the perpetual occupation of his conscience." This was the thought expressed in his reception discourse at the French Academy. The Count Daru replied to him. At the same session M. de Chateaubriand read a historic fragment. It was the first time since leaving the ministry that the celebrated writer had appeared in public, and he chose to do so to adorn the triumph of him whose rival he had been.
The Duke Mathieu de Montmorency died six months before he was to enter upon his functions as governor to the Duke of Bordeaux. It was Good Friday of the year 1826, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Before the tomb in the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas, his parish, the Duke was praying like a saint, when suddenly he was seen to waver, and then to fall. Those near him ran to him, raised him; he was dead. The news had hardly spread when the church was filled with a crowd of poor people, who wept hot tears over the loss of their benefactor. On the morrow the Duchess of Broglie wrote to Madame REcamier, for whom the deceased had had an almost mystic tenderness:—
"Holy Saturday. Oh, my God! my God! dear friend, what an event! I think of you with anguish. All the past comes up before me. I thought I could see the grief of my poor mother, and I think of yours, my dear friend, which must be terrible. But what a beautiful death! Thus he would have chosen it—the place, the day, the hour! The hand of God, of that saviour God, whose sacrifice he was celebrating, is here!"
Father Macarthy said, in a sermon preached in the Chapel of the Tuileries:—
"Happy he, O God, who comes before Thy altar, on the day of Thy death, at the very hour when Thou didst expire for the salvation of the world, to breathe out his soul at Thy feet, and be laid in Thy tomb!"
Lastly, the Duke de Laval-Montmorency wrote to Madame Recamier:—
"I say it to you, my dear friend, I avow it without false modesty, I never have had any merit or any honor in life, save from action in common with my angelic friend. He alone is happy; he is so beyond doubt; from heaven he sees our tears, our desolation, our homage; he will be our protector on high as he was our friend, our support, upon the earth."
The death of the virtuous Duke caused Charles X. great grief. He said: "There are in me two persons, the king and the man, and I know not which is the most affected."
M. de Chateaubriand desired—and the desire was quite natural—to replace the Duke of Montmorency in the office of governor of the Duke of Bordeaux, but the wish was not gratified. In his Life of Henry of France, M. de PEne makes the following reflections on this point:—
"Chateaubriand lacked neither the knowledge nor the virtue to be the Fenelon of a new Duke of Burgundy. The eclat of his literary renown, the political sense of which he had given proof in the Spanish war, the popularity that surrounded him, were certainly arguments in his favor. But looking at things coolly, it was clear that an irregular genius was not suited for the part of Mentor, when he still had all the wayward impulses of Telemaque."
The choice of Charles X. fell on one of his oldest and most faithful friends, the Lieutenant-General Duke Charles de Riviere. He was a soldier of great valor, of gentle disposition, full of modesty and kindness, believing devoutly and practising the Christian religion, a descendant of those old knights who joined in one love, God, France, and the King.
Born the 17th of December, 1763, M. de Riviere had been the companion and servitor of the princes in exile and misfortune, and they had confided to him the most difficult and dangerous missions. He was secretly in France in 1794, and was arrested and condemned to death as implicated in the Cadoudal case. At his trial, he was shown, at a distance, the portrait of the Count d'Artois, and asked if he recognized it. He asked to see it nearer, and then having it in his hands, he said, looking at the president: "Do you suppose that even from afar I did not recognize it? But I wished to see it nearer once more before I die." And the martyr of royalty religiously kissed the image of his dear prince.
Josephine intervened, and secured the commutation of the sentence, as well as that of the Duke Armand de Polignac. Napoleon, who admired men of force, caused to be offered to M. de Riviere his complete pardon, and a regiment or a diplomatic post, at choice. The inflexible royalist preferred to be sent to the fort of Joux, where Toussaint Louverture had died, and remained a prisoner up to the time of the marriage of the Empress Marie Louise.
Under the Restoration, M. de Riviere, who was Marquis and was made Duke only in 1825, became lieutenant-general, Peer of France, ambassador at Constantinople, captain of the body-guards of Monsieur. At the time of his accession, Charles X. did for his faithful servitor what had never before been done; he created for him a fifth company of the King's body-guards. "My dear Riviere," he said, "I have done my best for you, but we shall both lose by it; you used to guard me all the time, now you can guard me but three months in the year." The 30th of May, 1825, the morrow of the coronation and the day of the reception of the Knights of the Holy Spirit, Charles X. conferred the title of duke on his devoted friend. "By the way, Riviere, I have made you a duke." It recalled the words of Henry IV. to Sully in like circumstances.
When he chose the Duke de Riviere as governor of the Duke of Bordeaux, the King said to Madame de Gontaut: "In naming Riviere, I have followed, I confess, the inclinations of my heart; I am under obligations to him; he has incessantly exposed himself for our cause; he has borne captivity, poverty; I love him, and I am used to him."
The new governor, who was very modest, was frightened at the task confided to him.
"You congratulate me," he wrote to a friend; "console me, rather, pity me. An employment so grave must be a heavy burden. I am easy about the instruction my royal pupil will receive; the wise prelate named by the King as his preceptor will be a powerful auxiliary for me. But my share is still too great. It requires something more than fidelity for such a place,—firmness without roughness, unlimited patience, address, intelligence. I am frightened at the mission I have to fill. I begged the King to release me. He insisted. I asked him to make it a command; he replied: 'I will not command you, but you will give me great pleasure.' I did not conceal from the King that I should have preferred to remain captain of his guards; he answered: 'Well, you made that place for yourself; make this for me.' How could one resist such language from the lips of such a prince? There was but one choice to make,—to do all that he wished."
Charles X. named as sub-governors two distinguished military men, the Colonel Marquis de Barbamcois and the Lieutenant-Colonel Count de Maupas. He named as preceptor Mgr. Tharin, Bishop of Strasbourg, and as sub-preceptor the Abbe Martin de Noirlieu and M. de Barande. The Bishop of Strasbourg was a pious and learned priest, of great benevolence and extreme affability. But his appointment exasperated the Opposition, because he had formerly taken up the defence of the Order of the Jesuits against the attacks of M. de Montlosier. All the liberal sheets cried aloud. Le Journal des Debates, furious that its candidate to the succession of the Duke de Montmorency, M. de Chateaubriand, had not been named, wrote, regarding the appointment of Mgr. Tharin:—
"Such imprudence amazes, such blindness is pitiable. It awakens profound grief to see this chariot rush toward the abyss with no power to restrain it."
The Duke de Riviere gave himself up entirely to the task confided to him. He never quitted the young prince. He slept in his room and watched over him night and day. In the month of February, 1828, he fell ill. The princes and princesses visited him frequently. The sovereign himself, putting aside for this faithful friend the etiquette which forbade him to visit any one out of his own family, went constantly to see him and remained long with him. The Duke had no greater consolation, after that of his religion, than the visit of his King. He said to his family as the hour of the expected visit approached, "Do not let me sleep," and if he felt himself getting drowsy, "For pity's sake," he said, "awaken me if the King comes; it is the best remedy for my pains." Charles X. could hardly restrain his tears; on leaving the room he gave way to his grief. The little Duke of Bordeaux, also, was much saddened.
One day, when he was told that the sick man had passed a bad night, he said to his sister: "Let's play plays that don't amuse us to-day."
Another day, when it was reported that his governor was a little better: "In that case," he cried, "general illumination," and he went in broad day, and lighted all the candles in the salon. The Duke de Riviere died the 21st of April, 1828; by order of the King, his son lived from that time with the Duke of Bordeaux, and received lessons from the preceptors of the young Prince.
The Liberals wished the successor of the Duke to be one of their choice. They maintained that the son of France belonged to the nation, and that it had too much interest in his education to permit the parents alone to dispose of it, as in ordinary families. The ministry wished to be consulted. Charles X. replied that he took counsel with his ministers in all that concerned the public administration, but that he should maintain his liberty as father of a family in the choice of masters for his grandson.
The King named the Lieutenant-General Baron de Damas (born in 1785, died in 1858). He was a brave soldier and a good Christian. M. de Lamartine said that he had "integrity, obstinate industry, virtue incorruptible by the air of couits, patriotic purpose, cool impartiality, but no presence and no brilliancy," and that "his piety was as loyal and disinterested as his heart." He had been Minister of War, and of Foreign Affairs, and distinguished himself under the Duke of Angouleme, during the Spanish Expedition. But under the Revolution and the Empire, he had served in the Russian army, and this did not render him popular. The Abbe Vedrenne, in his VIE DE Charles X., wrote:—
"To watch over the person of the son of France, not quitting him night or day; to make sure that the rules of his education are followed in the employment of his time, in the routine of his lessons; to let no one save persons worthy of confidence come near him; to ward off all dangers, and notify the King of the least indisposition,—such is the duty of the governor. It requires more prudence than learning, more probity than genius. M. de Damas was a royalist too tried, too fervent a Christian, for his nomination not to provoke many murmurs. His place, moreover, had been desired by so many people, that there was no lack of those who were displeased and jealous. There was a general outcry over his incapacity and ignorance. One would have thought that he was to perform the task of a Bossuet and a Fenelon, while in reality he filled the place of a Montausier or a Beauvilliers. Had he not their virtues, and especially their devotion?"
The Duchess of Gontaut thus relates the first interview of the young Prince with his new governor: "Monseigneur was a little intimidated, when the Baron, coming up near to him, made a profound bow, and said: 'Monseigneur, I commend myself to you.' To which Monseigneur, not knowing what to say, said nothing, and as no one spake a word, the King dismissed us. When the Duke of Bordeaux learned that M. de Damas had six or seven boys nearly his age and only one girl, and that the girl would not be any trouble, his gaiety returned." The little Prince got used to his new governor, who had the most solid qualities, and who performed his task with the same devotion and zeal as his predecessor.
Charles X. was always much beloved by the court, but less so by the city. In vain, in his promenades, he sought the salutations of the crowd, and exerted himself by his affability to provoke acclamations; the public remained cold, and the monarch returned to the Tuileries, saddened by a change in his reception which he charged to the tactics of the liberal party and the calumnies of the journals. The anti-religious opposition went on increasing, and tried to persuade the crowd that the King was aiming at nothing less than placing his kingdom under the direction of the Jesuits.
The person of the sovereign was still respected, but the men who had his confidence were the object of the most violent criticisms. A coalition of the Extremists and the Left fought savagely against the Villele ministry, which was reproached particularly for its long duration.
From 1827, Orleansism, which Charles X. did not even suspect, existed in a latent state, and sagacious observers could perceive the dangers of the near future. A review of the National Guard of Paris was a forerunner of them.
Each year the 12th of April, the anniversary of the re-entrance of Monsieur to Paris in 1814, the National Guard alone was on duty at the Tuileries. This privilege was looked upon as the reward of the devotion it had then shown to the Prince, whose sole armed force it was for several weeks. In 1827, the 12th of April fell on Holy Thursday, a day given over wholly by the sovereign to his religious duties. In consequence, he decided that the day of exceptional service reserved to the National Guard should be postponed to Monday, the 16th. The morning of that day, detachments from all the legions, including the cavalry, assembled in the court of the Chateau, and were received by Charles X. He received a warm welcome, such as he had not been used to for a long time, and the crowd joined its shouts to the huzzas of the Guard. Charles X., filled with delight, said to the officers who joined him as the troops filed by: "I regret that the entire National Guard is not assembled for the review." Then the officers replied that their comrades would be only too happy if the King would consent to review the whole Guard. Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio, who was the commandant-in-chief, warmly supported this desire, and the sovereign responded by promising for April 29 the review thus urged.
Charles X. believed he had returned to the pleasant time of his popularity. He wished to confirm it by withdrawing a law as to the press, proposed in the Chambers, and vviuch, though called by the ultras a "law of love and justice," encountered bitter opposition even in the Chamber of Peers. The law was withdrawn April 17, the very day that the Moniteur announced the promise given the day before for the review of the 29th. On learning of the withdrawal of the unpopular law, the liberals uttered cries of joy and triumph. Columns of working printers traversed the streets with cries of "Long live the King! Long live the Chamber of Peers! Long live the liberty of the press!" In the evening Paris was illuminated. A victory over a foreign foe would not have been celebrated with greater transports of enthusiasm. The ministry was disquieted by these wild manifestations of delight, which, in reality, were directed against it. It tried in vain to induce the King to countermand the review of the 29th. M. de Chateaubriand wrote to Charles X. a long letter to beg him to change his ministry. It contained the following passage:—
"Sire, it is false that there is, as is said, a republican faction at present, but it is true that there are partisans of an illegitimate monarchy; now these latter are too adroit not to profit by the occasion, and mingle their voices on the 29th with that of France, to impose on the nation. What will the King do? Will he surrender his ministers to the popular demand? That would be to destroy the power of the State. Will he keep his ministers? They will cause all the unpopularity that pursues them to fall on the head of their august master." Chateaubriand closed as follows:—
"Sire, to dare to write you this letter, I must be strongly persuaded of the necessity of reaching a decision. An imperative duty must urge me. The ministers are my enemies. As a Christian I forgive them, as a man I can never pardon them. In this position I should never have addressed the King, if the safety of the monarchy were not involved."
All this urging was futile. Charles X. did not change his ministry, and the review took place on the Champ-de-Mars on the day appointed.
It is Sunday, April 29th, 1827. The weather is magnificent. The springtime sun gives to the capital a festive air. All the people are out. The twelve legions and the mounted guards—more than twenty thousand men—are under arms awaiting the King on the Champ-de-Mars. An enormous crowd occupies the slope. At one o'clock precisely, Charles X., mounted on a beautiful horse, which he manages like a skilled horseman, leaves the Tuileries with a numerous escort, including the Dauphin, the Duke of Orleans, the young Duke of Chartres, and a number of generals. The princesses follow in an open caleche. Everything appears to be going perfectly. The National Guards have pledged themselves to satisfy the King by their conduct. A note has been read in the ranks in these words: "Caution to the National Guards, to be circulated to the very last file. The rumor is spread that the National Guards intend to cry 'Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits!' Only mischief-makers can wish to see the National Guard abandon its noble character."
A general movement of curiosity on the Champ-de-Mars is noticed. Charles X. arrives. He has a serene brow, a smile upon his lips. It hardly seems possible that before the end of the year he will be a septuagenarian; he would be taken for a man of fifty, powdered. An immense cry of "Long live the King," raised by the National Guards, is repeated by the crowd. The monarch, radiant, salutes with glance and hand.
He passes along the front of the battalions. Here and there are heard cries of "Hurrah for the Charter! Hurrah for liberty of the press!" But they are drowned by those of "Long live the King!" Everything seems to go as he wishes, and Charles X. feels that the review, which his timid ministers regarded as dangerous, is an inspiration. So far it is for him only a triumph. But suddenly, as he appears in front of the Seventh Legion, he remarks the persistence with which a group of the Guards is crying, "Hurrah for the Charter!" The monarch perceives a sentiment of unfriendliness. A National Guardsman ventures to speak:—
"Does Your Majesty think that cheers for the Charter are an outrage?"—"Gentlemen," responds the King in a severe tone, "I came here to receive homage, not a lesson." The royal pride of this response had a good effect. The cries of "Long live the King!" are renewed with energy. The face of Charles X. again becomes calm and serene. Seated in his saddle before the Military School, the sovereign sees file by the twelve legions, with unanimous cheers. The review closed, the King says to Marshal Oudinot, commandant-in-chief of the National Guard: "It might have passed off better; there were some mar-plots, but the mass is good, and on the whole, I am satisfied."
The Marshal asks, if, in the order of the day he may mention the satisfaction of the King. "Yes," replied Charles X., "but I wish to know the terms in which this sentiment is expressed."
The sovereign returns on horseback to the Tuileries, while each legion goes to its own quarter. When he arrives at the Pavilion de l'Horloge, he is received by his two grandchildren. Mademoiselle throws herself upon his neck: "Bon-papa, you are content, aren't you?"—"Yes, almost," he answers. The Count de Bourbon-Busset, who is in the sovereign's suite, says to the Duchess of Gontaut, his mother-in-law, that all has passed off well. The Duchess of Angouleme, who has just alighted from her carriage, as well as the Duchess of Berry, hears this phrase; she cries: "You are not hard to please." The two princesses are as agitated as the King is calm. At the moment of their return they have been greeted with violent cries of "Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits!" It is even said that there was a cry of "Down with the Jesuitesses!" The clang of arms rendered these violent clamors more sinister. The daughter of Louis XVI. and the widow of the Duke of Berry believed themselves doubly insulted as women and as princesses. The Duchess of Angouleme, with intrepid countenance, but deeply irritated, trembled with indignation. It seemed to her that the Revolution was being revived. The scenes of horror that her uncle Charles X. had not beheld, but of which she had been the witness and the victim, arose before her again,—the 5th and the 6th of October, 1789, the 20th of June, and the 10th of August, 1792.
While the Dauphiness gives herself up to the gloomiest reflections, the Third Legion of the National Guard is passing under the windows of the Minister of Finance in the Rue de Rivoli. The minister, M. de Villele, has passed the day at the ministry, receiving from hour to hour news of the review. The blinds of his windows are closed. At the moment when the Third Legion files through the street, the band ceases to play, the drums stop beating. Cries of fury break from the ranks: "Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits! Down with Villele!" The guards brandish their arms; the officers themselves make menacing gestures; the tumult is at its height. M. de Villele, on the inside, follows from window to window the march of the legion, and so traverses the salons to the apartments occupied by his old mother and her family, whom he wishes to reassure by his own calm. Opposite the ministry, a great crowd fills the Terrasse des Feuillants, without taking part in the manifestation. But the clamors of the National Guards increase. They continue their march, enter the Rue Castiglione, reach the Place Vendome, where the Ministry of Justice is situated, and recommence their cries: "Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits! Down with Peyronnet!"
Invited to dine by Count Opponyi, ambassador of Austria, with all the ministers, M. de Villele waits to the last moment before going to the Embassy, still believing that he will be summoned by the King. As his waiting is in vain, he goes to the house of Count Opponyi and takes part in the dinner. At dessert, a messenger of Charles X. glides behind his chair, and says to him in a low voice: "The King charges me to tell you to come to him immediately." M. de Villele takes leave of the ambassadress, and sets out for the Tuileries. He finds Charles X. there, very calm, quite reassured, and having called him only to give expression to his confidence and sympathy. The minister exerts himself to make the sovereign see the situation in a very different light. He represents the incident of the Minister of Finance as secondary, but insists on the facts occurring at the Champ-de-Mars, notably the shouts around the carriage of the princesses. "It is a fact," replies the King. "I did hear them complain. Well, what do you advise me to do?" The minister responds: "This very evening, before the bureaux are closed, dissolve the National Guard of Paris; order the marshal on duty near your person, to have the posts held by the National Guard occupied at four o'clock in the morning by the troops of the line; to resort to this measure of force and justice to forestall the consequences of the most audacious attempt at revolution since the commencement of your reign. To-morrow, there are to arrive at Paris fifteen thousand men to replace the fifteen thousand of the actual garrison. It suffices to retain these latter, and thirty thousand men will be enough to hold the factions in check if they have the least intention of rising."—"Very well," resumes Charles X.; "go and consult your colleagues, and return after the soiree that I shall attend with the Duchess of Berry."
This soiree is a concert given by the Duchess at the Tuileries. The music is but little heard. The incidents of the review are the subject of all conversation. The courtiers wonder whether, to please the King, they should take a dark or a rose-colored view of things. The optimists and pessimists exchange impressions. Charles X. seems to lean to the former. "Apparently," he says, with his habitual bonhomie, "my bad ear has done me a friendly service, and I am glad of it, for I protest I heard no insults." Plainly it costs the sovereign pain to dismiss the National Guard. It gave him so brilliant a welcome in 1814. He was its generalissimo under the reign of Louis XVIII. He has liked to wear its uniform, the blue coat with broad fringes of silver that becomes him so well. But the ministers, except the Duke of Doudeauville and M. de Chabrol, pronounce strongly in favor of disbandment. Their idea prevails. After the concert Charles X. signs the decree, which appears in the Moniteur on the morrow, and is enforced without resistance. "The King can do anything!" cries the Duke de Riviere, with enthusiasm; and May 6th M. de Villele addresses to the Prince de Polignac, then ambassador at London, a letter in which he says: "The dissolution of the National Guard has been a complete success; the bad have been confounded by it, the good encouraged. Paris has never been more calm than since this act of severity, justice, and vigor." The monarchy thinks itself saved; it is lost.
There were still great illusions among those about Charles X., and the Duchess of Berry had not for a single instant an idea that the rights of her son could be compromised. They persuaded themselves that the Opposition would remain dynastic and that the severest crises would end only in a change of ministry. Nevertheless, even at the court, the more thoughtful began to be anxious, and perceived many dark points on the horizon. Certain royalists, enlightened by experience of the Emigration and Exile, had a presentiment that the Restoration would be for them only a halt in the long way of catastrophes and sorrow. They mourned the optimist tranquillity in which some of the courtiers succeeded in lulling the King. There were courageous and faithful servitors who, at the risk of displeasing their master and losing his good graces, did not recoil from the sad obligation of telling him the whole truth. From the beginning of his reign, Charles X. heard useful warnings, and later he blamed himself for not having listened better to them. This justice, however, must be done him, that if he had not the wisdom to profit by such counsels, he never was offended at the men of heart who dared to give them to him.
In this number was the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld, son of the Duke of Doudeauville, son-in-law of Mathieu de Montmorency, charged with the department of the fine arts, at the ministry of the King's household. In publishing the reports addressed by him to Charles X. from his accession to the Revolution of 1830, he writes:—
"These are respectful and tender warnings of which too little account was taken, and which might have saved the King and France. I put them down here with the gloomy predictions contained in them, which have been only too completely realized. They are not prophecies after the event. We saw in advance the misfortunes of the King, the fall of the monarchy, the ruin of legitimacy. Each page, then each line, and soon every word of this part of my Memoirs will be a cry of alarm: 'God save the King!' Alas! He has not saved him. One is always wrong if one cannot get a hearing and make one's self believed. It is then, with no pride in my previsions, but with bitter regret, that I could not get them accepted, that I recall this long monologue addressed to Charles X."
From the beginning of the reign, as he foresaw that one day the Chamber would sign the Address of the 221, and that M. Laffitte would be the banker of the revolution of July, the Viscount wrote to the sovereign in December, 1824:—
"The King has two things to combat for the glory and strength of his rule, the encroachments of the Chamber of Deputies, and the power of money in Europe. Four bankers could to-day decide war, if such was their pleasure. Sovereigns cannot seek too earnestly to free themselves from the sceptre which is rising above their own. The triumph of moneyed men will blight the character and the morals of France."
M. de La Rochefoucauld added (report of January 31, 1825) this prediction, which shows to what length his frankness went in his loyal explanations with his King:—
"We are between two rocks, equally dangerous: revolution with the Duke of Orleans, and ultraism with the good Polignac. The by-word now is: 'These princes will end like the Stuarts.' Madame de—, who is agitating against the laws now under discussion, has said: 'Yes, it's the second throne of the Stuarts.' The Left compare the Archbishop of Rheims to Father Peters, the restless and ambitious confessor of King James. It is not easy for me to write thus to the King, and I have assumed a hard task in promising myself to conceal nothing from him. Sometimes my heart is oppressed and my hand stops; but I question my conscience, which seems troubled, and the indispensable necessity of telling all to the King, that he may judge in his wisdom, decides me to go on."
How many sagacious warnings given by the brave courtier, or, better, by the faithful friend, during the year 1825, the year of the coronation: "The good Madame de M— of the Sacred Heart was saying the other day: 'We had a King with no limbs, and with a head; now we have limbs and no head.' It is unheard of, the trouble taken in certain circles to make out that the King has no will. The future must give to all a complete refutation; the future must teach them that the King knows how to distinguish those that betray from those that serve him." (Report of March 1, 1825). "Does the King wish to run the chances of a complete overturning by throwing himself into the hands of the ultras? That would be to fall again under the blows of the Revolution, which counts on these to push the monarchy into the abyss always held open at its side."
From 1825, criticism of the King began. He was accused of giving himself up too much to the pleasures of the chase. The time was approaching when his enemies would say of him—a cruel play on words: "He's good for nothing but to hunt," and would translate the four letters over the doors of houses M. A. C. L. (Maison Assuree Contre l'Incendie) by this phrase: Mes Amis, Chassons-le.
The 17th of June, 1825, M. de La Rochefoucauld wrote:—
"I must tell all to the King. I have prevented the giving of a play at the Odeon called Robin des Bois (Robin Hood), because it is a nickname criminally given by the people to him whom they accuse of hunting too often, an accusation very unjust in the eyes of those who know that never did a prince work more than he to whom allusion is made. When the King takes this distraction so necessary to him, why hasten to make it known to the public? All news comes from the Chateau, and the Constitutionnel and the Quotidienne are always the best informed."
He returned to the same subject October 6:—
"I am in despair at seeing the journals recounting hunt after hunt. I know the effect that produces. I wanted to get at the source of these mischievous reports, and M— communicated to me confidentially that these reports came to him from the court, and at such length that he always cut them down three-fourths. In this case, it is for the King to give orders."
Let us put beside this report the following passage from the Memoirs of the Duke of Doudeauville:—
"I must justify Charles X. in this passion for the chase, so bitterly laid up against him in that time when malice and bad faith seized on everything that could injure him. Five whole days every week he remained in his apartment, busy with affairs of state, working with the ministers, examining by himself their different reports with a sensitive heart, much soul, and more intellect than had been believed; he had much reason and a very sound judgment. We were often astonished at it in the Council, over which he presided, and which he prolonged two, three, four, and five hours, without permitting himself the least distraction or showing any sign of weariness. Often, in the most difficult discussions, he would open up an opinion that no one had conceived, and which, full of sagacity, smoothed every difficulty.
"Twice a week, and often only once, when the weather permitted, he went hunting, perhaps gunning, perhaps coursing. It will be conceded that it was a necessary exercise after such assiduous toil and occupations so sedentary.
"I certify that this was the extent of the hunting of which calumny, to ruin him, made a crime. Every time he went hunting, the Opposition journals did not fail to announce it, which persuaded nearly all France that he passed all his time in the distractions of this amusement."
The tide of detraction of the sovereign steadily rose. The Viscount de La Rochefoucauld perceived it clearly. He wrote to the King, 13th October, 1825:—
"The interior of France, as regards commerce, agriculture, industry, wealth, offers a most striking spectacle. Let Charles X., as King and father, rejoice in his work; but let him reflect that the lightest sleep would be followed by a terrible awakening."
The 12th of January, 1826, when his father-in-law, the Duke Mathieu de Montmorency, had just been named governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, M. de La Rochefoucauld again wrote to the King:—
"Shall I thank the King for the nomination of M. de Montmorency? Six months ago, it would have been useful. To-day, it is merely good. But alas, how far is that interesting Prince from the crown! and what shocks and revolutions he must traverse first. If ever—God watch over France; the Orleans are making frightful progress."
The signs of the coming storm accumulated in the most alarming manner. Read this other report of the Viscount de La Rochefoucauld (August 8, 1826):—
"Indifference to religion, hatred of the priests, were the symptoms of the Revolution. God grant that the same things do not bring the same results. The unfortunate priests no longer dare to go through the streets; they are everywhere insulted. Three days since, a well-dressed man, passing by the sentinel of the Luxembourg said to him, pointing to a priest: 'Never mind; in a year you'll see no more of all these wretches.' The poor Cure of Clichy was in real danger, surrounded by two or three hundred madmen, who cried; 'Down with the black-hats!' Every day there is a scene of the same sort."
The popularity of Charles X., so great at the beginning of his reign, was dwindling every day at Paris. M. de La Rochefoucauld did not fear to declare it to him.
"By what inconceivable fatality is it," he wrote, February 6, 1827, "that the king amid all the care he takes to ensure the happiness of his people, is losing from day to day in their love and affection? At the play—and it is there, to use an expression of Napoleon, that the pulse of public opinion is to be felt—the most seditious and hostile allusions are eagerly caught up. Saturday last, verses, of which the sense was that kings who have lost the love of their people encounter only silence and coldness, were greeted with triple applause and furiously encored."
The report of May 12,1827, was like an alarm bell:
"Circumstances are so grave that the calmest minds betray fear regarding them; there are now but one opinion and one feeling,—doubt and fear. It is said openly, as eight years since: This branch cannot keep the crown; it is impossible; who will succeed it? How many things, great Heavens, done in eight years; how many things forgotten!"
Exposed to an outpouring of enmities and of incessant intrigues, taken between two fires,—the extreme Right and the Left,—M. de Villele no longer had the strength to govern. His ministry was about to come to an end. Later, in retracing in his journal this phase of his career, he wrote:—
"All that took place was of a feebleness destructive of all government, and disheartening for him who bears all the responsibility for it, with the weight of affairs besides. But he was not, and did not pretend to be, the Cardinal Richelieu. He had not his character, nor his ambition, nor his superior gifts. He did not even envy them. Had he been quite different in this regard, to repress and annul his king, to oppress the daughter of Louis XVI. and the widow of the Duke of Berry, to exile from France the new Gaston d'Orleans, and his numerous family, to bring down the heads of the court pygmies,—more dangerous, perhaps, with their influence over the King and his family and their vexatious intrigues in the Court of Peers than the Montmorencys and the Cinq-Mars,—this was a rele to which he never aspired and would not have accepted."
Charles X. sacrificed M. de Villele, who, however, had his sympathy, and replaced him with a liberal minister, perhaps with a mental reservation as to a ministry, before long, from the extreme Right. The retiring minister wished to remain in the Chamber of Deputies, to defend his acts. For their part, his successors, fearing his influence in that body, wished his transfer to the Chamber of Peers, where, in their judgment, he would be less dangerous. At the last Council of Ministers attended by M. de Villele, the King passed to him a note in pencil, announcing that he had called him to the peerage. The statesman declined, in a note also in pencil. "You wish then to impose yourself upon me as minister?" wrote the King once more. M. de Villele appeared moved, and passed to the sovereign this response: "The King well knows the contrary; but since he can write it, let him do with me what he will." The next day the Martignac ministry entered on its duties, and the Duchess of Angoule'me said to Charles X.: "It is true, then, that you are letting Villele go? My father, you descend to-day the first step of the throne."
Mde. Martignac, who succeeded M. de Villele in the Ministry of the Interior, was a man of merit, honest, liberal, and sincerely devoted to the King. Born in 1776, at Bordeaux, he was at first an advocate at the bar of that city, and at the same time made himself known by some witty vaudevilles. On the return of the Bourbons, he entered the magistracy, became procureur-general at Limoges, was elected a deputy in 1821, and distinguished himself in the tribune. He was Minister of the Interior from January, 1828, to August, 1829, and his name was given to the ministry of which he was a member. He had for colleagues enlightened and moderate men, such as Count Auguste de La Ferronnays, M. Roy, Count Portalis. He tried to reconcile the different parties, and to preserve the throne from the double danger of reaction and revolution. Taken between two fires, the extreme Right and the extreme Left, he was destined to fail in his generous effort.
The royalist sentiment was becoming constantly more feeble. The 24th of January, 1828, some days after the formation of the Martignac ministry, the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld wrote, in a report to the King:—
"In going to Saint-Denis, the 21st of January (the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.), and seeing the lightness with which the court itself conducted itself there, it was impossible for me not to make many reflections on the futility of an age in which no memory is sacred. And by what right can the people be asked to have a better memory when such an example is given to them? No cortege, no coaches draped, none of the pomp that strikes the imagination and the eye. Some isolated carriages, passing rapidly over the route, as if every one longed to be more promptly rid of whatever is grave and mournful in this day of cruel memory."
The ultras were thinking much less of the real interests of the monarchy than of their own spites and their personal ambitions.
These pretended supports of the throne were digging the abyss in which the throne was to be swallowed up. Charles X., blinded, was already thinking of calling the Prince de Polignac to power, and regarded the Martignac ministry as a provisional expedient. To the despair of the members of this ministry, he maintained relations with M. de Villele, whose fall he regretted. After the opening of the session, he wrote to his former minister, February 6, 1828:—
"What do you think of my discourse? I did my best; but as it was a success with some persons of doubtful opinions, I am afraid that it is not worth much. Everything appears to me so confused, that I know not what to count upon. The eulogies of the Debats and the Constitutionnel make me fear I have said stupid things. Yet I hope not, and I shall continue to arrest with firmness what may lead to dangerous concessions."
On the other hand, if there were among the liberals some sincere and well-intentioned men, who meant to remain faithful alike to the throne and the Charter, there were others who already masked treachery under the appearance of devotion to the King. Those who two years later were to boast of having labored during the entire restoration for the ruin of the elder branch,—actors in the comedy of fifteen years, as they called themselves,—gave themselves out, in 1828, as partisans and enthusiastic admirers of Charles X. At the commencement of the session a deputy of the Left, having affected to say in the tribune that the King had not a single enemy, the Right permitted itself some exclamations of doubt. One of its members, M. de Marinhac, cried: "As a good prince I believe that His Majesty has no enemies, but as King, he has many, and I know them," added he, looking at his opponents. The entire Left was indignant, and caused the orator to be called to order. M. Dupin thanked the president, and said in an agitated voice: "It is a calumny, an insult, that we cannot endure. Nothing wounds us more than to hear ourselves accused of being the enemies of him whom we adore, cherish, bless."
The tactics of the Opposition were to flatter the King, but to disarm him and to make him look on those who were really revolutionists as ministerialists. M. de Martignac was a man of good faith, but many who boasted of supporting him were not so, and perhaps M. de Villele was right when he wrote to Charles X. in June, 1828:—
"I could serve Your Majesty only with the light and the character God has given me. It would have been, it would be, impossible for me to believe that authority can be maintained by concessions and by leaning on those who wish to overthrow it."
Meanwhile there were still some fine days for the old King. His journey in the departments of the east, in 1828, was a continual ovation that recalled to him the enthusiasm of the beginning of his reign. Setting out from Saint Cloud the 31st of August, he arrived at Metz the 3d of September. All the houses of this great military city were hung with the white flag adorned with fleurs-de-lis. After having visited some of the fortifications, Charles X., following the ramparts, came to an elegant pavilion erected on the site of the ancient citadel. Long covered seats were arranged for the ladies of the city; a prodigious number of spectators occupied the ramparts. In the presence of the sovereign a regiment made a simulated attack on a "demi-lune" and a bastion.
On September 6, Saverne arranged a very picturesque reception for the King. All the cantons and all the communes sent thither, together with their mayors and their richest farmers, their prettiest village girls in Alsatian costume. Five hundred peasants, clad in red vest and long black coat, the head covered with a great hat turned up on one side, a white ribbon tied about the left arm, were on horseback at the place of meeting. The young girls, bearing flags and garlands, were brought in wagons, each containing a dozen or sixteen. In other wagons were the musicians. The pretty Alsaciennes presented the monarch with a basket of flowers; then he breakfasted with the authorities, and, at a signal, fires were lighted at the same time on the plain and on the surrounding mountains.
The 7th of September, Charles X. entered Strasbourg in triumph. At a league from the city, on a height from which it was to be seen, and whence the wooded hills of the Black Forest were visible, he was awaited by a crowd of young girls in Alsatian costume, in three hundred wagons, with four or six horses to each. There were also twelve hundred horsemen, divided into squadrons, the mayors with their scarfs at their head and carrying the fleur-de-lis standards. The royal cortege passed, under arbors of verdure and flowers, amid this long file of vehicles and horsemen, who escorted it to the walls of Strasbourg. Delighted with the enthusiasm of which he was the object, the sovereign proceeded to the Cathedral, where a te deum was sung. In the evening the spire of this marvellous church was illuminated: it was like a pyramid of stars.
The King of Wurtemberg, the Grand Duke of Baden, and his three brothers came to greet the King of France in the capital of Alsace. He showed them at the arsenal sixteen hundred pieces of ordnance on their carriages, and arms sufficient for a hundred thousand men.
"Sire, and gentlemen," he said with a smile, in which kingly pride mingled with perfect urbanity, "I have nothing to conceal from you. This is something I can show to my friends as to my enemies."
Yes, France was great then, and no one could have predicted for Alsace the fate reserved for her forty-two years later. The army was the admiration of Europe. The navy had just recaptured at Navarino the prestige and power of the time of Louis XVI. Charles X. said to Mr. Hyde de Neuville:—
"France, when a noble design is involved, takes counsel only with herself. Thus whether England wishes or not, we shall free Greece. Continue the armaments with the same activity. I shall not pause in the path of humanity and honor."
And at the moment when the very Christian King was greeted by the German Princes in the Alsatian capital, his victorious troops were completing in the Morea the enfranchisement of Greece.
Charles X. returned by Colmar, Luneville, Nancy, and Champagne. At Troyes he found himself surrounded by all the liberal deputies, and he decorated Casimir PErier. Everywhere he had an enthusiastic welcome. On his return to Saint Cloud he was warmly congratulated by all his court. Nevertheless, as the Duchess of Gontaut said to him:—
"Sire, you must be happy."—"What do cheers signify?" he answered, not without sadness. "These demonstrations, all superficial, should not dazzle—a friendly gesture of the hand, a prince's, a king's, expression of satisfaction will obtain them."
Despite this philosophic reflection, Charles X. was triumphant. If his ministers wished to credit their liberal policy with the ovations he had received in the east, he called their attention to the fact that he had been not less well received the year before under the Villele ministry at the time of his visit to the camp of Saint Omer. In the enthusiasm manifested by the people, he saw an homage to the monarchical principle, not to the policy of one or another ministry.
"You hear these people. Do they shout hurrah for the Charter? No, they cry long live the King!" Still confident of the future, he wished to persuade himself that the obstacles piled up before his dynasty were but clouds that a favorable wind would scatter soon. "Ah, Monsieur de Martignac," he cried, with deep joy, "what a nation! what should we not do for it!"
At the moment that Charles X. traversed the provinces of the east in triumph, the Duchess of Berry was making in the west a journey not less brilliant than that of the sovereign.