The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X Part 12

"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: 'G.o.d 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.suree Contre l'Incendie) by this phrase: Mes Amis, Cha.s.sons-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 Const.i.tutionnel 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 pa.s.sage from the Memoirs of the Duke of Doudeauville:--

"I must justify Charles X. in this pa.s.sion 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 a.s.siduous 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 pa.s.sed all his time in the distractions of this amus.e.m.e.nt."

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--G.o.d watch over France; the Orleans are making frightful progress."

The signs of the coming storm acc.u.mulated 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. G.o.d 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, pa.s.sing 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. Sat.u.r.day 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:

"Circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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."

XXII

THE MARTIGNAC MINISTRY

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, pa.s.sing 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 Const.i.tutionnel 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 G.o.d 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 hors.e.m.e.n, divided into squadrons, the mayors with their scarfs at their head and carrying the fleur-de-lis standards. The royal cortege pa.s.sed, under arbors of verdure and flowers, amid this long file of vehicles and hors.e.m.e.n, 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 a.r.s.enal 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:--