A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 25

[Marshal Ney.]

[The Chambers in Paris.]

[Napoleon enters Paris, March 20.]

From this time all was over. Marshal Ney, who had set out from Paris protesting that Napoleon deserved to be confined in an iron cage, [227]

found, when at some distance from Lyons, that the nation and army were on the side of the Emperor, and proclaimed his own adherence to him in an address to his troops. The two Chambers of Legislature, which had been prorogued, were summoned by King Louis XVIII. as soon as the news of Napoleon's landing reached the capital. The Chambers met on the 13th of March. The const.i.tutionalist party, though they had opposed various measures of King Louis' Government as reactionary, were sincerely loyal to the Charta, and hastened, in the cause of const.i.tutional liberty, to offer to the King their cordial support in resisting Bonaparte's military despotism. The King came down to the Legislative Chamber, and, in a scene concerted with his brother, the Count of Artois, made, with great dramatic effect, a declaration of fidelity to the Const.i.tution. Lafayette and the chiefs of the Parliamentary Liberals hoped to raise a sufficient force from the National Guard of Paris to hold Napoleon in check. The project, however, came to nought. The National Guard, which represented the middle cla.s.ses of Paris, was decidedly in favour of the Charta and Const.i.tutional Government; but it had no leaders, no fighting-organisation, and no military spirit. The regular troops who were sent out against Napoleon mounted the tricolor as soon as they were out of sight of Paris, and joined their comrades. The courtiers pa.s.sed from threats to consternation and helplessness. On the night of March 19th King Louis fled from the Tuileries. Napoleon entered the capital the next evening, welcomed with acclamations by the soldiers and populace, but not with that general rejoicing which had met him at Lyons, and at many of the smaller towns through which he had pa.s.sed.

[Congress of Vienna outlaws Napoleon.]

[Napoleon's preparations for defence.]

France was won: Europe remained behind. On the 13th of March the Ministers of all the Great Powers, a.s.sembled at Vienna, published a manifesto denouncing Napoleon Bonaparte as the common enemy of mankind, and declaring him an outlaw. The whole political structure which had been reared with so much skill by Talleyrand vanished away. France was again alone, with all Europe combined against it. Affairs reverted to the position in which they had stood in the month of March, 1814, when the Treaty of Chaumont was signed, which bound the Powers to sustain their armed concert against France, if necessary, for a period of twenty years. That treaty was now formally renewed. [228] The four great Powers undertook to employ their whole available resources against Bonaparte until he should be absolutely unable to create disturbance, and each pledged itself to keep permanently in the field a force of at least a hundred and fifty thousand men. The presence of the Duke of Wellington at Vienna enabled the Allies to decide without delay upon the general plan for their invasion of France. It was resolved to group the allied troops in three ma.s.ses; one, composed of the English and the Prussians under Wellington and Blucher, to enter France by the Netherlands; the two others, commanded by the Czar and Prince Schwarzenberg, to advance from the middle and upper Rhine. Nowhere was there the least sign of political indecision. The couriers sent by Napoleon with messages of amity to the various Courts were turned back at the frontiers with their despatches undelivered. It was in vain for the Emperor to attempt to keep up any illusion that peace was possible. After a brief interval he himself acquainted France with the true resolution of his enemies. The most strenuous efforts were made for defence. The old soldiers were called from their homes. Factories of arms and ammunition began their hurried work in the princ.i.p.al towns. The Emperor organised with an energy and a command of detail never surpa.s.sed at any period of his life; the nature of the situation lent a new character to his genius, and evoked in the organisation of systematic defence all that imagination and resource which had dazzled the world in his schemes of invasion and surprise. Nor, as. .h.i.therto, was the nation to be the mere spectator of his exploits. The population of France, its National Guard, its _levee en ma.s.se_, as well as its armies and its Emperor, was to drive the foreigner from French soil. Every operation of defensive warfare, from the acc.u.mulation of artillery round the capital to the gathering of forest-guards and free-shooters in the thickets of the Vosges and the Ardennes, occupied in its turn the thoughts of Napoleon. [229] Had France shared his resolution or his madness, had the Allies found at the outset no chief superior to their Austrian leader in 1814, the war on which they were now about to enter would have been one of immense difficulty and risk, its ultimate issue perhaps doubtful.

[Campaign and fall of Murat, April, 1815]

Before Napoleon or his adversaries were ready to move, hostilities broke out in Italy. Murat, King of Naples, had during the winter of 1814 been represented at Vienna by an envoy: he was aware of the efforts made by Talleyrand to expel him from his throne, and knew that the Government of Great Britain, convinced of his own treachery during the pretended combination with the Allies in 1814, now inclined to act with France. [230]

The instinct of self-preservation led him to risk everything in raising the standard of Italian independence, rather than await the loss of his kingdom; and the return of Napoleon precipitated his fall. At the moment when Napoleon was about to leave Elba, Murat, who knew his intention, asked the permission of Austria to move a body of troops through Northern Italy for the alleged purpose of attacking the French Bourbons, who were preparing to restore his rival, Ferdinand. Austria declared that it should treat the entry either of French or of Neapolitan troops into Northern Italy as an act of war. Murat, as soon as Napoleon's landing in France became known, protested to the Allies that he intended to remain faithful to them, but he also sent a.s.surances of friends.h.i.+p to Napoleon, and forthwith invaded the Papal States. He acted without waiting for Napoleon's instructions, and probably with the intention of winning all Italy for himself even if Napoleon should victoriously re-establish his Empire. On the 10th of April, Austria declared war against him. Murat pressed forward and entered Bologna, now openly proclaiming the unity and independence of Italy. The feeling of the towns and of the educated cla.s.ses generally seemed to be in his favour, but no national rising took place. After some indecisive encounters with the Austrians, Murat retreated. As he fell back towards the Neapolitan frontier, his troops melted away. The enterprise ended in swift and total ruin; and on the 22nd of May an English and Austrian force took possession of the city of Naples in the name of King Ferdinand. Murat, leaving his family behind him, fled to France, and sought in vain to gain a place by the side of Napoleon in his last great struggle, and to retrieve as a soldier the honour which he had lost as a king. [231]

[The Acte Additionnel, April 23, 1815.]

In the midst of his preparations for war with all Europe, Napoleon found it necessary to give some satisfaction to that desire for liberty which was again so strong in France. He would gladly have deferred all political change until victory over the foreigner had restored his own undisputed ascendency over men's minds; he was resolved at any rate not to be hara.s.sed by a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, like that of 1789, at the moment of his greatest peril; and the action of King Louis XVIII. in granting liberty by Charta gave him a precedent for creating a Const.i.tution by an Edict supplementary to the existing laws of the Empire. Among the Liberal politicians who had declared for King Louis XVIII. while Napoleon was approaching Paris, one of the most eminent was Benjamin Constant, who had published an article attacking the Emperor with great severity on the very day when he entered the capital. Napoleon now invited Constant to the Tuileries, a.s.sured him that he no longer either desired or considered it possible to maintain an absolute rule in France, and requested Constant himself to undertake the task of drawing up a Const.i.tution. Constant, believing the Emperor to be in some degree sincere, accepted the proposals made to him, and, at the cost of some personal consistency, entered upon the work, in which Napoleon by no means allowed him entire freedom. [232] The result of Constant's labours was the Decree known as the Acte Additionnel of 1815. The leading provisions of this Act resembled those of the Charta: both professed to establish a representative Government and the responsibility of Ministers; both contained the usual phrases guaranteeing freedom of religion and security of person and property. The princ.i.p.al differences were that the Chamber of Peers was now made wholly hereditary, and that the Emperor absolutely refused to admit the clause of the Charta abolis.h.i.+ng confiscation as a penalty for political offences. On the other hand, Constant definitely extinguished the censors.h.i.+p of the Press, and provided some real guarantee for the free expression of opinion by enacting that Press-offences should be judged only in the ordinary Jury-courts. Constant was sanguine enough to believe that the doc.u.ment which he had composed would reduce Napoleon to the condition of a const.i.tutional king. As a Liberal statesman, he pressed the Emperor to submit the scheme to a Representative a.s.sembly, where it could be examined and amended. This Napoleon refused to do, preferring to resort to the fiction of a Plebiscite for the purpose of procuring some kind of national sanction for his Edict.

The Act was published on the 23rd of April, 1815. Voting lists were then opened in all the Departments, and the population of France, most of whom were unable to read or write, were invited to answer Yes or No to the question whether they approved of Napoleon's plan for giving his subjects Parliamentary government.

[The Chambers summoned for June.]

There would have been no difficulty in obtaining some millions of votes for any absurdity that the Emperor might be pleased to lay before the French people; but among the educated minority who had political theories of their own, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possible impression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of the Emperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected to bestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of the new Const.i.tution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon's object was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, the educated cla.s.ses as well as the peasantry, to rally round him in a struggle with the foreigner for life or death: he found, on the contrary, that he had actually injured his cause. The hostility of public opinion was so serious that Napoleon judged it wise to make advances to the Liberal party, and sent his brother Joseph to Lafayette, to ascertain on what terms he might gain his support. [233] Lafayette, strongly condemning the form of the Acte Additionnel, stated that the Emperor could only restore public confidence by immediately convoking the Chambers. This was exactly what Napoleon desired to avoid, until he had defeated the English and Prussians; nor in fact had the vote of the nation accepting the new Const.i.tution yet been given. But the urgency of the need overcame the Emperor's inclinations and the forms of law. Lafayette's demand was granted: orders were issued for an immediate election, and the meeting of the Chambers fixed for the beginning of June, a few days earlier than the probable departure of the Emperor to open hostilities on the northern frontier.

[Elections.]

Lafayette's counsel had been given in sincerity, but Napoleon gained little by following it. The nation at large had nothing of the faith in the elections which was felt by Lafayette and his friends. In some places not a single person appeared at the poll: in most, the candidates were elected by a few scores of voters. The Royalists absented themselves on principle: the population generally thought only of the coming war, and let the professed politicians conduct the business of the day by themselves. Among the deputies chosen there were several who had sat in the earlier a.s.semblies of the Revolution; and, mingled with placemen and soldiers of the Empire, a considerable body of men whose known object was to reduce Napoleon's power.

One interest alone was unrepresented--that of the Bourbon family, which so lately seemed to have been called to the task of uniting the old and the new France around itself.

[Champ de Mai.]

Napoleon, troubling himself little about the elections, laboured incessantly at his preparations for war, and by the end of May two hundred thousand men were ready to take the field. The delay of the Allies, though necessary, enabled their adversary to take up the offensive. It was the intention of the Emperor to leave a comparatively small force to watch the eastern frontier, and himself, at the head of a hundred and twenty-five thousand men, to fall upon Wellington and Blucher in the Netherlands, and crush them before they could unite their forces. With this object the greater part of the army was gradually ma.s.sed on the northern roads at points between Paris, Lille, and Maubeuge. Two acts of State remained to be performed by the Emperor before he quitted the capital; the inauguration of the new Const.i.tution and the opening of the Chambers of Legislature. The first, which had been fixed for the 26th of May, and announced as a revival of the old Frankish Champ de Mai, was postponed till the beginning of the following month. On the 1st of June the solemnity was performed with extraordinary pomp and splendour, on that same Champ de Mars where, twenty-five years before, the grandest and most affecting of all the festivals of the Revolution, the Act of Federation, had been celebrated by King Louis XVI. and his people. Deputations from each of the const.i.tuencies of France, from the army, and from every public body, surrounded the Emperor in a great amphitheatre enclosed at the southern end of the plain: outside there were ranged twenty thousand soldiers of the Guard and other regiments; and behind them spread the dense crowd of Paris. When the total of the votes given in the Plebiscite had been summed up and declared, the Emperor took the oath to the Const.i.tution, and delivered one of his masterpieces of political rhetoric. The great officers of State took the oath in their turn: ma.s.s was celebrated, and Napoleon, leaving the enclosed s.p.a.ce, then presented their standards to the soldiery in the Champ de Mars, addressing some brief, soul-stirring word to each regiment as it pa.s.sed.

The spectacle was magnificent, but except among the soldiers themselves a sense of sadness and disappointment pa.s.sed over the whole a.s.sembly. The speech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: the applause was forced: all was felt to be ridiculous, all unreal. [234]

[Plan of Napoleon.]

The opening of the Legislative Chambers took place a few days later, and on the night of the 11th of June Napoleon started for the northern frontier.

The situation of the forces opposed to him in this his last campaign strikingly resembled that which had given him his first Italian victory in 1796. Then the Austrians and Sardinians, resting on opposite bases, covered the approaches to the Sardinian capital, and invited the a.s.sailant to break through their centre and drive the two defeated wings along diverging and severed paths of retreat. Now the English and the Prussians covered Brussels, the English resting westward on Ostend, the Prussians eastward on Cologne, and barely joining hands in the middle of a series of posts nearly eighty miles long. The Emperor followed the strategy of 1796. He determined to enter Belgium by the central road of Charleroi, and to throw his main force upon Blucher, whose retreat, if once he should be severed from his colleague, would carry him eastwards towards Liege, and place him outside the area of hostilities round Brussels. Blucher driven eastwards, Napoleon believed that he might not only push the English commander out of Brussels, but possibly, by a movement westwards, intercept him from the sea and cut off his communication with Great Britain. [235]

[Situation of the armies.]

On the night of the 13th of June, the French army, numbering a hundred and twenty-nine thousand men, had completed its concentration, and lay gathered round Beaumont and Philippeville. Wellington was at Brussels; his troops, which consisted of thirty-five thousand English and about sixty thousand Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, [236] guarded the country west of the Charleroi road as far as Oudenarde on the Scheldt. Blucher's headquarters were at Namur; he had a hundred and twenty thousand Prussians under his command, who were posted between Charleroi, Namur, and Liege. Both the English and Prussian generals were aware that very large French forces had been brought close to the frontier, but Wellington imagined Napoleon to be still in Paris, and believed that the war would be opened by a forward movement of Prince Schwarzenberg into Alsace. It was also his fixed conviction that if Napoleon entered Belgium he would throw himself not upon the Allied centre, but upon the extreme right of the English towards the sea. [237] In the course of the 14th, the Prussian outposts reported that the French were ma.s.sed round Beaumont: later in the same day there were clear signs of an advance upon Charleroi. Early next morning the attack on Charleroi began. The Prussians were driven out of it, and retreated in the direction of Ligny, whither Blucher now brought up all the forces within his reach. It was unknown to Wellington until the afternoon of the 15th that the French had made any movement whatever: on receiving the news of their advance, he ordered a concentrating movement of all his forces eastward, in order to cover the road to Brussels and to co-operate with the Prussian general. A small division of the British army took post at Quatre Bras that night, and on the morning of the 16th Wellington himself rode to Ligny, and promised his a.s.sistance to Blucher, whose troops were already drawn up and awaiting the attack of the French.

[Ligny, June 16.]

But the march of the invader was too rapid for the English to reach the field of battle. Already, on returning to Quatre Bras in the afternoon, Wellington found his own troops hotly engaged. Napoleon had sent Ney along the road to Brussels to hold the English in check and, if possible, to enter the capital, while he himself, with seventy thousand men, attacked Blucher. The Prussian general had succeeded in bringing up a force superior in number to his a.s.sailants; but the French army, which consisted in a great part of veterans recalled to the ranks, was of finer quality than any that Napoleon had led since the campaign of Moscow, and it was in vain that Blucher and his soldiers met them with all the gallantry and even more than the fury of 1813. There was murderous hand-to-hand fighting in the villages where the Prussians had taken up their position: now the defenders, now the a.s.sailants gave way: but at last the Prussians, with a loss of thirteen thousand men, withdrew from the combat, and left the battlefield in possession of the enemy. If the conquerors had followed up the pursuit that night, the cause of the Allies would have been ruined. The effort of battle had, however, been too great, or the estimate which Napoleon made of his adversary's rallying power was too low. He seems to have a.s.sumed that Blucher must necessarily retreat eastwards towards Namur; while in reality the Prussian was straining every nerve to escape northwards, and to restore his severed communication with his ally.

[Quatre Bras, June 16.]

At Quatre Bras the issue of the day was unfavourable to the French. Ney missed his opportunity of seizing this important point before it was occupied by the British in any force; and when the battle began the British infantry-squares unflinchingly bore the attack of Ney's cavalry, and drove them back again and again with their volleys, until successive reinforcements had made the numbers on both sides even. At the close of the day the French marshal, baffled and disheartened, drew back his troops to their original position. The army-corps of General d'Erlon, which Napoleon had placed between himself and Ney in order that it might act wherever there was the greatest need, was first withdrawn from Ney to a.s.sist at Ligny, and then, as it was entering into action at Ligny, recalled to Quatre Bras, where it arrived only after the battle was over. Its presence in either field would probably have altered the issue of the campaign.

[Prussian movement.]

Blucher, on the night of the 16th, lay disabled and almost senseless; his lieutenant, Gneisenau, not only saved the army, but repaired, and more than repaired, all its losses by a memorable movement northwards that brought the Prussians again into communication with the British. Napoleon, after an unexplained inaction during the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, committed the pursuit of the Prussians to Marshal Grouchy, ordering him never to let the enemy out of his sight; but Blucher and Gneisenau had already made their escape, and had concentrated so large a body in the neighbourhood of Wavre, that Grouchy could not now have prevented a force superior to his own from uniting with the English, even if he had known the exact movements of each of the three armies, and, with a true presentiment of his master's danger, had attempted to rejoin him on the morrow.

Wellington, who had both antic.i.p.ated that Blucher would be beaten at Ligny, and a.s.sured himself that the Prussian would make good his retreat northwards, moved on the 17th from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, now followed by Napoleon and the ma.s.s of the French army. At Waterloo he drew up for battle, trusting to the promise of the gallant Prussian that he would advance in that direction on the following day. Blucher, in so doing, exposed himself to the risk of having his communications severed and half his army captured, if Napoleon should either change the direction of his main attack and bend eastwards, or should crush Wellington before the arrival of the Prussians, and seize the road from Brussels to Louvain with a victorious force. Such considerations would have driven a commander like Schwarzenberg back to Liege, but they were thrown to the winds by Blucher and Gneisenau. In just reliance on his colleague's energy, Wellington, with thirty thousand English and forty thousand Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, awaited the attack of Napoleon, at the head of seventy-four thousand veteran soldiers. The English position extended two miles along the brow of a gentle slope of cornfields, and crossed at right angles the great road from Charleroi to Brussels; the chateau of Hugomont, some way down the slope on the right, and the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, on the high-road in front of the left centre, served as fortified outposts. The French formed on the opposite and corresponding slope; the country was so open that, but for the heavy rain on the evening of the 17th, artillery could have moved over almost any part of the field with perfect freedom.

[Waterloo, June 18.]

At eleven o'clock on Sunday, the 18th of June, the battle began. Napoleon, unconscious of the gathering of the Prussians on his right, and unacquainted with the obstinacy of English troops, believed the victory already thrown into his hands by Wellington's hardihood. His plan was to burst through the left of the English line near La Haye Sainte, and thus to drive Wellington westwards and place the whole French army between its two defeated enemies. The first movement was an a.s.sault on the buildings of Hugomont, made for the purpose of diverting Wellington from the true point of attack. The English commander sent detachments to this outpost sufficient to defend it, but no more. After two hours' indecisive fighting and a heavy cannonade, Ney ordered D'Erlon's corps forward to the great onslaught on the centre and left. As the French column pressed up the slope, General Picton charged at the head of a brigade. The English leader was among the first to fall, but his men drove the enemy back, and at the same time the Scots Greys, sweeping down from the left, cut right through both the French infantry and their cavalry supports, and, charging far up the opposite slope, reached and disabled forty of Ney's guns, before they were in their turn overpowered and driven back by the French dragoons. The English lost heavily, but the onslaught of the enemy had totally failed, and thousands of prisoners remained behind. There was a pause in the infantry combat; and again the artillery of Napoleon battered the English centre, while Ney marshalled fresh troops for a new and greater effort.

About two o'clock the attack was renewed on the left. La Haye Sainte was carried, and vast ma.s.ses of cavalry pressed up the English slope, and rode over the plateau to the very front of the English line. Wellington sent no cavalry to meet them, but trusted, and trusted justly, to the patience and endurance of the infantry themselves, who, hour after hour, held their ground, unmoved by the rush of the enemy's horse and the terrible spectacle of havoc and death in their own ranks; for all through the afternoon the artillery of Napoleon poured its fire wherever the line was left open, or the a.s.sault of the French cavalry rolled back.

At last the approach of the Prussians visibly told. Napoleon had seen their vanguard early in the day, and had detached Count Lobau with seven thousand men to hold them in check; but the little Prussian corps gradually swelled to an army, and as the day wore on it was found necessary to reinforce Count Lobau with some of the finest divisions of the French infantry. Still reports came in of new Prussian columns approaching. At six o'clock Napoleon prepared to throw his utmost strength into one grand final attack upon the British, and to sweep them away before the battle became general with their allies. Two columns of the Imperial Guard, supported by every available regiment, moved from the right and left towards the English centre. The column on the right, unchecked by the storm of Wellington's cannon-shot from front and flank, pushed to the very ridge of the British slope, and came within forty yards of the cross-road where the English Guard lay hidden. Then Wellington gave the order to fire. The French recoiled; the English advanced at the charge, and drove the enemy down the hill, returning themselves for a while to their own position. The left column of the French Guard attacked with equal bravery, and met with the same fate. Then, while the French were seeking to re-form at the bottom of the hill, Wellington commanded a general advance. The whole line of the British infantry and cavalry swept down into the valley; before them the baffled and sorely-stricken host of the enemy broke into a confused ma.s.s; only the battalions of the old Guard, which had halted in the rear of the attacking columns, remained firm together. Blucher, from the east, dealt the death-blow, and, pressing on to the road by which the French were escaping, turned the defeat into utter ruin and dispersion. The pursuit, which Wellington's troops were too exhausted to attempt, was carried on throughout the night by the Prussian cavalry with memorable ardour and terrible success. Before the morning the French army was no more than a rabble of fugitives.

[Napoleon at Paris.]

[Allies enter Paris, July 7.]

Napoleon fled to Philippeville, and made some ineffectual attempts both there and at Laon to fix a rallying point for his vanished forces. From Laon he hastened to Paris, which he reached at sunrise on the 21st. His bulletin describing the defeat of Waterloo was read to the Chambers on the same morning. The Lower House immediately declared against the Emperor, and demanded his abdication. Unless Napoleon seized the dictators.h.i.+p his cause was lost. Carnot and Lucien Bonaparte urged him to dismiss the Chambers and to stake all on his own strong will; but they found no support among the Emperor's counsellors. On the next day Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son. But it was in vain that he attempted to impose an absent successor upon France, and to maintain his own Ministers in power. It was equally in vain that Carnot, filled with the memories of 1793, called upon the a.s.sembly to continue the war and to provide for the defence of Paris. A Provisional Government entered upon office. Days were spent in inaction and debate while the Allies advanced through France. On the 28th of June, the Prussians appeared on the north of the capital; and, as the English followed, they moved to the south of the Seine, out of the range of the fortifications with which Napoleon had covered the side of St. Denis and Montmartre. Davoust, with almost all the generals in Paris, declared defence to be impossible. On the 3rd of July, a capitulation was signed.

The remnants of the French army were required to withdraw beyond the Loire.

The Provisional Government dissolved itself; the Allied troops entered the capital and on the following day the Members of the Chamber of Deputies, on arriving at their Hall of a.s.sembly, found the gates closed, and a detachment of soldiers in possession. France was not, even as a matter of form, consulted as to its future government. Louis XVIII. was summarily restored to his throne. Napoleon, who had gone to Rochefort with the intention of sailing to the United States, lingered at Rochefort until escape was no longer possible, and then embarked on the British s.h.i.+p _Bellerophon_, commending himself, as a second Themistocles, to the generosity of the Prince Regent of England. He who had declared that the lives of a million men were nothing to him [238] trusted to the folly or the impotence of the English nation to provide him with some agreeable asylum until he could again break loose and deluge Europe with blood. But the lesson of 1814 had been learnt. Some island in the ocean far beyond the equator formed the only prison for a man whom no European sovereign could venture to guard, and whom no fortress-walls could have withdrawn from the attention of mankind. Napoleon was conveyed to St. Helena. There, until at the end of six years death removed him, he experienced some trifling share of the human misery that he had despised.

[Wellington and Fouche.]

Victory had come so swiftly that the Allied Governments were unprepared with terms of peace. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria were still at Heidelberg when the battle of Waterloo was fought; they had advanced no further than Nancy when the news reached them that Paris had surrendered.

Both now hastened to the capital, where Wellington was already exercising the authority to which his extraordinary successes as well as his great political superiority over all the representatives of the Allies then present, ent.i.tled him. Before the entry of the English and Prussian troops into Paris he had persuaded Louis XVIII. to sever himself from the party of reaction by calling to office the regicide Fouche, head of the existing Provisional Government. Fouche had been guilty of the most atrocious crimes at Lyons in 1793; he had done some of the worst work of each succeeding government in France; and, after returning to his old place as Napoleon's Minister of Police during the Hundred Days, he had intrigued as early as possible for the restoration of Louis XVIII., if indeed he had not held treasonable communication with the enemy during the campaign. His sole claim to power was that every gendarme and every informer in France had at some time acted as his agent, and that, as a regicide in office, he might possibly reconcile Jacobins and Bonapartists to the second return of the Bourbon family. Such was the man whom, in a.s.sociation with Talleyrand, the Duke of Wellington found himself compelled to propose as Minister to Louis XVIII. The appointment, it was said, was humiliating, but it was necessary; and with the approval of the Count of Artois the King invited this blood-stained eavesdropper to an interview and placed him in office. Need subdued the scruples of the courtiers: it could not subdue the resentment of that grief-hardened daughter of Louis XVI. whom Napoleon termed the only man of her family. The d.u.c.h.ess of Angouleme might have forgiven the Jacobin Fouche the ma.s.sacres at Lyons: she refused to speak to a Minister whom she termed one of the murderers of her father.

[Disagreement on terms of peace.]

Fouche had entered into a private negotiation with Wellington while the English were on the outskirts of Paris, and while the authorised envoys of the a.s.sembly were engaged elsewhere. Wellington's motive for recommending him to the King was the indifference or hostility felt by some of the Allies to Louis XVIII. personally, which led the Duke to believe that if Louis did not regain his throne before the arrival of the sovereigns he might never regain it at all. [239] Fouche was the one man who could at that moment throw open the road to the Tuileries. If his overtures were rejected, he might either permit Carnot to offer some desperate resistance outside Paris, or might retire himself with the army and the a.s.sembly beyond the Loire, and there set up a Republican Government. With Fouche and Talleyrand united in office under Louis XVIII., there was no fear either of a continuance of the war or of the suggestion of a change of dynasty on the part of any of the Allies. By means of the Duke's independent action Louis XVIII. was already in possession when the Czar arrived at Paris, and nothing now prevented the definite conclusion of peace but the disagreement of the Allies themselves as to the terms to be exacted. Prussia, which had suffered so bitterly from Napoleon, demanded that Europe should not a second time deceive itself with the hollow guarantee of a Bourbon restoration, but should gain a real security for peace by detaching Alsace and Lorraine, as well as a line of northern fortresses, from the French monarchy. Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of England, stated it to be the prevailing opinion in this country that France might fairly be stripped of the princ.i.p.al conquests made by Louis XIV.; but he added that if Napoleon, who was then at large, should become a prisoner, England would waive a permanent cession of territory, on condition that France should be occupied by foreign armies until it had, at its own cost, restored the barrier-fortresses of the Netherlands. [240] Metternich for a while held much the same language as the Prussian Minister: Alexander alone declared from the first against any reduction of the territory of France, and appealed to the declarations of the Powers that the sole object of the war was the destruction of Napoleon and the maintenance of the order established by the Peace of Paris.

[Arguments for and against cessions.]

[Prussia isolated.]

[Second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20.]

The arguments for and against the severance of the border-provinces from France were drawn at great length by diplomatists, but all that was essential in them was capable of being very briefly put. On the one side, it was urged by Stein and Hardenberg that the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 with an undiminished territory had not prevented France from placing itself at the end of a few months under the rule of the military despot whose life was one series of attacks on his neighbours: that the expectation of long-continued peace, under whatever dynasty, was a vain one so long as the French possessed a chain of fortresses enabling them at any moment to throw large armies into Germany or the Netherlands: and finally, that inasmuch as Germany, and not England or Russia, was exposed to these irruptions, Germany had the first right to have its interests consulted in providing for the public security. On the other side, it was argued by the Emperor Alexander, and with far greater force by the Duke of Wellington, [241] that the position of the Bourbons would be absolutely hopeless if their restoration, besides being the work of foreign armies, was accompanied by the loss of French provinces: that the French nation, although it had submitted to Napoleon, had not as a matter of fact offered the resistance to the Allies which it was perfectly capable of offering: and that the danger of any new aggressive or revolutionary movement might be effectually averted by keeping part of France occupied by the Allied forces until the nation had settled down into tranquillity under an efficient government. Notes embodying these arguments were exchanged between the Ministers of the great Powers during the months of July and August. The British Cabinet, which had at first inclined to the Prussian view, accepted the calm judgment of Wellington, and transferred itself to the side of the Czar. Metternich went with the majority. Hardenberg, thus left alone, abandoned point after point in his demands, and consented at last that France should cede little more than the border-strips which had been added by the Peace of 1814 to its frontier of 1791. Chambery and the rest of French Savoy, Landau and Saarlouis on the German side, Philippeville and some other posts on the Belgian frontier, were fixed upon as the territory to be surrendered. The resolution of the Allied Governments was made known to Louis XVIII. towards the end of September.

Negotiation on details dragged on for two months more, while France itself underwent a change of Ministry; and the definitive Treaty of Peace, known as the second Treaty of Paris, was not signed until November the 20th.

France escaped without substantial loss of territory; it was, however, compelled to pay indemnities amounting in all to about 40,000,000; to consent to the occupation of its northern provinces by an Allied force of 150,000 men for a period not exceeding five years; and to defray the cost of this occupation out of its own revenues. The works of art taken from other nations, which the Allies had allowed France to retain in 1814, had already been restored to their rightful owners. No act of the conquerors in 1815 excited more bitter or more unreasonable complaint.

[Treaty of Holy Alliance, Sept. 26.]

It was in the interval between the entry of the Allies into Paris and the definitive conclusion of peace that a treaty was signed which has gained a celebrity in singular contrast with its real insignificance, the Treaty of Holy Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander had rendered many public acts of homage to religion in the intervals of diplomatic and military success in the year 1814; and after the second capture of Paris he drew up a profession of religious and political faith, embodying, as he thought, those high principles by which the Sovereigns of Europe, delivered from the iniquities of Napoleon, were henceforth to maintain the reign of peace and righteousness on earth. [242] This doc.u.ment, which resembled the pledge of a religious brotherhood, formed the draft of the Treaty of the Holy Alliance. The engagement, as one binding on the conscience, was for the consideration of the Sovereigns alone, not of their Ministers; and in presenting it to the Emperor Francis and King Frederick William, the Czar is said to have acted with an air of great mystery. The King of Prussia, a pious man, signed the treaty in seriousness; the Emperor of Austria, who possessed a matter-of-fact humour, said that if the paper related to doctrines of religion, he must refer it to his confessor, if to secrets of State, to Prince Metternich. What the confessor may have thought of the Czar's political evangel is not known: the opinion delivered by the Minister was not a sympathetic one. "It is verbiage," said Metternich; and his master, though unwillingly, signed the treaty. With England the case was still worse. As the Prince Regent was not in Paris, Alexander had to confide the articles of the Holy Alliance to Lord Castlereagh. Of all things in the world the most incomprehensible to Castlereagh was religious enthusiasm. "The fact is," he wrote home to the English Premier, "that the Emperor's mind is not completely sound." [243]

Apart, however, from the Czar's sanity or insanity, it was impossible for the Prince Regent, or for any person except the responsible Minister, to sign a treaty, whether it meant anything or nothing, in the name of Great Britain. Castlereagh was in great perplexity. On the one hand, he feared to wound a powerful ally; on the other, he dared not violate the forms of the Const.i.tution. A compromise was invented. The Treaty of the Holy Alliance was not graced with the name of the Prince Regent, but the Czar received a letter declaring that his principles had the personal approval of this great authority on religion and morality. The Kings of Naples and Sardinia were the next to subscribe, and in due time the names of the witty glutton, Louis XVIII., and of the abject Ferdinand of Spain were added. Two potentates alone received no invitation from the Czar to enter the League: the Pope, because he possessed too much authority within the Christian Church, and the Sultan, because he possessed none at all.