Louis Philippe Part 6

The Spaniards did not love the English, and the English made no efforts to disguise their contempt of the Spaniards. There was no cordial co-operation of action. There was a strong party in Spain in favor of the regeneration of their country by the enlightened and liberal views which Joseph Bonaparte was introducing. There was another powerful party opposed to France, and equally opposed to British domination.

"The greatest anarchy," says Mr. Wright, "prevailed in every part of the Peninsula. The Spaniards were divided in their allegiance, and a Bonapartist party was formed in the heart of the country. The national resources were exhausted; and their co-operation with the English wanted that cordiality to which her n.o.ble efforts had ent.i.tled her, and which Spanish policy ought to have extended to them.

"Brovul, who had been dispatched to convey a mere affectionate expression of regard and love from her children to the venerable d.u.c.h.ess, became, on his route, transformed into a political envoy. It was now distinctly and emphatically proposed, by several of the most distinguished men of the Spanish national party, that the Duke of Orleans should be invited over into Spain, and that he should place himself at their head, and lead an army of invasion into France.

"A secret agent was sent into the southern provinces of France to ascertain the public sentiment there. He reported that the people looked to the Duke of Orleans as the only member of the Bourbon family who enjoyed a military reputation; as a prince whose sword had been sharpened by the wrongs of his race, and that they declared, in the most enthusiastic manner, their readiness to follow him to victory or death."

Misled by this report, which proved to be a gross exaggeration, the Spanish Junta appointed the Duke of Orleans to a command destined to act on the frontiers of Catalonia. But the local juntas were opposed to the movement. There was no harmony--no combined action. All was confusion, and the duke made no attempt to enter upon his command.[J]

The Sicilian queen, Maria Caroline, irritated by the utter failure of the movement in behalf of her son, and disappointed that the Duke of Orleans had so little influence over the British Cabinet, became quite alienated from her prospective son-in-law, wrote very cold letters to him, and the failure of the marriage treaty was openly spoken of in the court and in the journals.

[Footnote J: "Besides, possibly England did not think, and the exiled Bourbons of the elder branch would naturally have concurred in the sentiment, that it would be prudent or politic to send a gallant prince of Orleans to lead the Spaniards to victory, a prince who was the great-grandson of that Philippe of Orleans who, by the l.u.s.tre of his talents and the many attractions of his character, became the idol of the army and the nation."--_Life and Times of Louis Philippe_, by Rev. G. N. Wright.]

The duke--whose attachment to the Princess Amelia was very strong--alarmed by these procedures, repaired immediately to Palermo to confront his enemies and to plead his cause. He was successful.

The confidence and love of Amelia had never abated. The presence of the ill.u.s.trious young man--so handsome, so intelligent, so spotless in character, so fascinating and princely in his bearing--soon dispelled all clouds. The queen could no longer withhold her consent to the nuptials. With happiness thus beginning to dawn upon him, the duke wrote as follows to his mother:

"Their majesties urged some objections to the marriage of a princess of their house to a wandering exile like myself.

Upon which I stated that I should apply to you and induce you to advocate my cause, and become security for my principles and fidelity to those to whom I promised allegiance. 'Ah,'

replied the queen, 'if you can obtain the advocacy of that angel, it will, indeed, be impossible to refuse you any thing.' I should like, dear mother, to give you a faithful portrait of the princess, who was destined to be my bride, even before her birth. But I feel that I could make but an indifferent and very unworthy sketch. She possesses many amiable and elevated qualities, which I shall take the liberty of summing up in one brief sentence, by a.s.suring you that she seems to be a perfect model of my mother."

Soon after this the d.u.c.h.ess embarked in an English frigate for Palermo, and reached there in safety on the 15th of October, 1809.

Thus, after long, long years of separation, the survivors of the exiled family, though still in exile, were reunited. On the 25th of November the nuptial benediction was p.r.o.nounced in the beautiful old Norman chapel of the Palazzo Reale.

"The most remarkable and curious fact connected with the origin and structure of the Capella Reale is, that to the completion of this most perfect ill.u.s.tration of the art of ecclesiastic building three nations have contributed--the Greeks, Saracens, and Normans. And by this fortuitous a.s.sociation the chaste style of the ancients, the cold manner of the Northerns, and the luxurious fas.h.i.+on of the East are all here blended in perfect harmony."[K]

[Footnote K: Wright's Sh.o.r.es and Islands of the Mediterranean.]

General Ca.s.s, the American minister to France, who, thirty years after these events, wrote from the palace of the Tuileries, where Louis Philippe and his amiable queen were then enthroned, says:

"The queen was the daughter of that King of Naples who was driven from his Continental dominions by the French, and took refuge, with his family and court, in Sicily. Here the king, Louis Philippe, then poor and in exile, married her; and the match is understood to have been one of affection on both sides. The thirtieth anniversary of their union has just expired, and they are at the summit of human power, with a most interesting family of seven children, and, as is known to every body, with the warmest attachment to each other. In the bitterness of French political discussions no whisper of calumny has ever been heard against the queen. And one who could pa.s.s through this ordeal has nothing more to dread from human investigation. A kinder, more anxious mother is nowhere to be found. She is a sincere believer in the Christian religion, and devout in the performance of its duties. Her charity is known throughout the country, and appeals for the distressed are never made to her in vain. In the performance of her regal duties, while her bearing is what the nature of her position requires, there is a kind of affability which seems continually seeking to put all around her as much at their ease as possible."[L]

[Footnote L: France in 1840. By an American--[General Ca.s.s].]

CHAPTER V.

THE RESTORATION.

1814-1817

The Sicilian Court.--Retirement of the duke.--The Restoration.--The return to Paris.--Arrival in Paris.--Reception by the Bourbons.--Testimony of an American.--Pride of the Bourbons.--Madame de Genlis.--Triumphal advance of Napoleon.--Flight of Louis XVIII.--Signal triumph of Napoleon.--Retirement of the Bourbons.--Efforts of the Duke of Orleans.--Dejection of the Duke of Orleans.--Calumnies of the journals.--Return of the Bourbons to Paris.--The duke's possessions restored.--The duke returns to the Palais Royal.--Humanity of the Duke of Orleans.--The duke persecuted by the court.--Execution of Marshal Ney.--Again an exile.--Testimony of Madame de Genlis.--The princes in the national lyceums.--Democratic tendencies of the duke.

The court of Ferdinand IV., one of the most worthless and corrupt of the old feudal dynasties, was maintained in Sicily by the army, the navy, and the purse of England. His Sicilian majesty received from the British Government an annual subsidy of four hundred thousand pounds sterling ($2,000,000), to support the dignity of his throne, and to pay for the troops which Sicily furnished England for her interminable warfare against the French Empire. The Duke of Orleans severely condemned the errors and follies continually developed by the reigning dynasty, and yet he found himself utterly powerless to remedy them. The queen was the ruling power at the court, and her prejudiced and impa.s.sioned nature was impervious to any appeals of reason. She knew very well that England did not loan her protection and lavish her gold upon the Sicilian Court from any love for that court, but simply from dread and hatred of the republican principles advocated by Napoleon. She, therefore, often treated the English with the utmost disdain. And yet, sustained by twenty thousand British troops upon the island, she trampled upon all popular rights, consigning, by arbitrary arrests, to the dungeon or to exile all who opposed her sway.

"Against these violations of law, infringements of liberty, and manifestations of absolutism, the Sicilians rose with becoming firmness. The Duke of Orleans had long foreseen the approaching hurricane, the gathering wrath of an injured people; but finding his remonstrances vain, his principles of government almost directly contrary to those of his august mother-in-law, he retired from a court where there was no room for a virtuous counsellor, and, with his wife and her infant prince, lived in retirement a few miles from Palermo."[M]

[Footnote M: Life and Times of Louis Philippe.]

The duke was living tranquilly, and perhaps not unhappily, in this retirement, abstaining from all partic.i.p.ation in the intrigues of the Sicilian Court, when, on the morning of the 23d of April, 1814, an English frigate, with every banner floating triumphantly in the breeze, entered the harbor of Palermo. It brought the astounding intelligence of the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons. The exciting tidings soon reached the ears of the duke. He hurried to Palermo, and drove directly to the palace of the English amba.s.sador, where he was greeted with the words:

"I congratulate you upon the downfall of Napoleon, and on the restoration of the ill.u.s.trious race, of which you yourself are a member, to the throne of their fathers."

For a moment the duke was speechless with astonishment, and then declared the story to be quite incredible. He however was soon convinced that it was even so, by reading a copy of the _Moniteur_, which gave a detailed account of the whole event. All the s.h.i.+pping and all the forts of Palermo were now resounding with the thunders of exultation. The Duke of Orleans had fought under the tri-color flag.

Mingled emotions agitated him. He saw that national banner which had waved so proudly over many a field of victory now trampled in the dust beneath the feet of foreign squadrons, and their allied armies exultingly encamped within the parks of his native city. The restoration of the Bourbons had been accomplished at the expense of the humiliation of his country.

The next day, the commander of the s.h.i.+p which had brought the intelligence called at the residence of the Duke of Orleans, and said to him,

"I am directed by Admiral Lord William Bentinck, who is now at Genoa, to wait upon your royal highness, and ascertain if you wish to return to France. If so, my vessel and my personal services are at your command. If you prefer to remain at Naples, I hope you may enjoy that lasting happiness to which, by your eventful and virtuous life, you are so eminently ent.i.tled."[N]

[Footnote N: During much of his exile, Louis XVIII. had occupied the chateau of Hartwell, in the county of Buckingham, about fifty miles from London.]

The duke pondered the fact that he was invited to return to Paris, not by an envoy from the restored king, but by an officer in the British navy. Still the prince resolved immediately to repair to Paris. Taking an affectionate farewell of his wife and their infant son, he embarked on board the English frigate, accompanied by a single servant, and on the eighteenth of May, 1814, entered his native city, from which he had so long been an exile. Louis XVIII.

was already there, having returned to Paris in the rear of the bayonets and the batteries of foreign troops. It was his majesty's expressed wish that the Palais Royal, the hereditary mansion of the Orleans family, should be repaired and restored to its former owners.

During the republican and imperial rule, its numerous and s.p.a.cious apartments had been appropriated to private residences. The duke, upon arriving in Paris, availed himself of temporary accommodations in furnished apartments in the Rue Grange Bateliere. One of his first steps was to repair incognito to the home of his fathers. The Swiss servants who guarded the palace still wore the imperial livery. With some reluctance they yielded to the importunities of the stranger, and allowed him to penetrate the interior apartments.

"As he approached the grand staircase, the recollections of his boyhood, the l.u.s.tre of his ancient race, the agonies of mind he had endured since he last beheld that spot, and grat.i.tude to that Providence which had spared him amidst such universal ruin, completely overwhelmed him, and, falling prostrate on the tesselated pavement, he imprinted a thousand kisses on the cold white marble, while tears gus.h.i.+ng from his eyes indicated, while they relieved, the emotions with which he contended."[O]

[Footnote O: Life and Times of Louis Philippe.]

The next day the duke was presented to his majesty, Louis XVIII., at the Tuileries. As he approached the royal presence, the king advanced towards him, and said,

"Your highness was a lieutenant-general in the service of your country twenty-five years ago, and you are still the same."

The a.s.sumption adopted by Louis XVIII. that there had been no interruption of the Bourbon reign, and the attempt to blot from history the twenty-five most eventful years in the annals of France, deservedly excited both contempt and ridicule. An American writer of distinction says:

"The unconquerable prejudices of the Bourbons, and their studied ignorance of the feelings of the country they were called to govern after an exile of twenty-five years, were the prognostics as well as the cause of their ultimate fall.

"Their imperial predecessor had indeed left them a difficult task. His career was so brilliant that it may well have dazzled his countrymen, and left them unfitted for a milder domination. He was, indeed, a wonderful man; and I have been more powerfully impressed than ever, since my arrival in France, with the prodigious force of his character, and with the gigantic scope as well as the vast variety of his plans.

"I am satisfied that circ.u.mstances have not been favorable to a just appreciation of the whole character of Napoleon in the United States. While he was at the head of the nation, we surveyed him very much through the English journals, and we imbibed all the prejudices which a long and bitter war had engendered against him in England. To be sure, his military renown could not be called in question; but of his civic talents a comparatively humble estimate was formed. I have since learned to correct this appreciation."[P]

[Footnote P: General Ca.s.s.]

It was the undisguised effort of Louis XVIII., now restored by foreign armies to the throne, to annihilate the memory of all that France had achieved at home and abroad, under the administration of Napoleon. The tri-color was exchanged for the white banner of the Bourbons, and the eagles were replaced by the Gallic c.o.c.k. All the insignia of imperialism were carefully obliterated. The evidence seems quite conclusive that the king, notwithstanding his apparent reconciliation with the Duke of Orleans, still regarded him with much suspicion, and would have been very willing that he should have continued in exile. Indeed, the king seemed disposed to revive old family feuds, that he might keep the duke estranged, as far as possible, from the sympathies of the Legitimist party.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans was of royal blood, the daughter of a king.

But the father of the Duke of Orleans had worn only a ducal, not a royal crown. The king, consequently, gave orders that, whenever the Duke of Orleans and his suite should appear at court, both of the folding-doors of the grand entrance should be thrown open for the d.u.c.h.ess, while but one should be opened for her husband.

In July the duke embarked in a French s.h.i.+p of the line, with Baron Athalin and Count Sainte Aldegonde as his aids, to transfer his family from Palermo to Paris. Early in August they were luxuriously domiciled in his magnificent ancestral home. Madame de Genlis, now venerable in years, and having ever retained the reverence and affection of her distinguished pupils, hastened to join the ducal family in the saloons of the Palais Royal.

"This resolution," she writes, "procured me the inexpressible happiness of once more seeing my pupils, Mademoiselle and the Duke of Orleans. In our first interview they both displayed to me all the affection, all the emotion and delight which I myself experienced.

Alas! how deeply I felt, at this meeting, the absence of the beloved pupils, the Duke of Montpensier and his brother Count Beaujolais, who both died in exile."

The winter pa.s.sed rapidly away, and on the 5th of March, 1815, to the dismay of the Bourbons, and of all the crowned heads of Europe, the tidings reached Paris that Napoleon had left Elba, landed at Cannes, and, accompanied by ever-increasing thousands of enthusiastic supporters, was on the triumphal march towards the metropolis. The most terrible proclamations were hurled against him by Louis XVIII., but all in vain. All opposition melted before the popular emperor.

The path from Cannes to Paris was over six hundred miles in length, through the heart of France. But the Bourbons, with the armies of France nominally at their disposal, and the sympathies of all the feudal dynasties in Europe enlisted in their behalf, could summon no force sufficient to arrest the progress of that one unarmed man. The Duke of Orleans hastened to the presence of his majesty, and, addressing the trembling monarch, said: