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the wound of Niepperg mortal:" | printed in the Parisian journals on the 25th May," that the ardour with the original text in the royal of the Neapolitan troops was, ac- newspaper of Ghent, must come cording to official bulletins from to another conclusion. It would be Naples, extreme, and the health of difficult to find an instance of more the king excellent, and finally, all shameful falsification than this the Parisian Journals of the 27th comparison shows. The interpolaMay, speak thus: tions and suppressions to be de"An aid-de-camp of king Joa-tected would fill nearly as large a chim arrived yesterday 26th May, space as the papers themselves. at Paris, charged with dispatches They reach exactly those passages from his sovereign. The situation which were most likely to make of the Neapolitan armies and the an impression upon the people, and military operations are very advan- most unmanageable in the attempt tageous, notwithstanding the con- at refutation. We are sorry that✔ trary intelligence published at Flo- our limits exclude the quotation of what would serve to prove these assertions.

rence."

On the 25th of May, however, the robust king had landed near Cannes, as a miserable fugitive, and the only intimation ever given of his arrival, is this, from the Gazette de France, of the 31st May. "A journal announces to-day the landing of the king and queen of Naples, with their children, at Toulon. This news wants confirmation!" Care was taken that the whole catastrophe should not transpire in Paris, before the field of May was held, and especially that the exking should not cloud this august ceremony by his ill-omened presence, although he certainly had, after all his pictories, as fair a title to a seat near the imperial throne as Joseph or Jerome.

On the 2d and the 15th June, appeared in the Journal de l'Empire the manifesto of Louis XVIII. of the 24th April, his declarations of 17th April, and 2d of May, issued at Ghent, and the manifesto of the king of Spain of 2d of May. The publication of these papers would, at first, seem to support the allegation of Caulincourt, as to the desire of his imperial majesty of giving the whole truth to his faithful people. But, whoever will take the trouble of comparing them as

we

The domestic unanimity and enthusiasm blazoned in the circulars and reports which have had occasion to notice, are strangely evidenced by the condition of the interior in the month of May. Let the ministers themselves explain this condition. "Emigrations begin," says the minister of Police in his report to the emperor of the 7th of May, " correspondences are opened with the enemy abroad; the subjects of them are circulated within; clubs are forming in the cities, &c."* And in his circular to the prefects of the 28th May-" Insurrection has just burst forth on many points of the western departments; the civil war so celebrated and so fatal may be kindled there again." -The minister of war to the commandant of the department of the Loire-" General, the partizans of

On the 14th May, an address was presented to his imperial majesty by the electoral college of the Seine. The following assertion makes part of his majesty's reply of the same date"The nation has never at any period of her history shown more unanimity and energy."

civil war have raised the standard of rebellion upon some points of La Vendee; French blood has already begun to flow; mighty measures have been taken to crush this rebellion in the bud. An army of 25,000 men, a numerous train of artillery, are marching upon the Loire. It is time, general, that strong measures be adopted; such as may make bad Frenchmen tremble, and encourage the good." These strong measures, the minister of police in his report just quoted, pressingly recommends. He regrets that they were not resorted to against the royalists at the opening of the revolution, "as we should not then have to deplore the measures of violence which the governments of that period (meaning the convention and directory) were constrained to take, and which even the weight of circumstances can scarcely justify."* Measures recommended thus by any minister of the imperial go

*It is hardly to be borne that Fouché should now, in his exile, assume to him

self the merit of moderation in his pub

lic career. If we had forgotten his sanguinary measures and dispatches as a commissary of the convention, we could scarcely fail to remember his ferocious reports as minister of police, during the consulate of Bonaparte. The member of the provisional government formed after the 2d abdication of Bonaparte,

who recommends the most violent and arbitrary measures-is Fouché; and if all the reports of this man were collected in a volume, they would be found to present an unrivalled pandect of state hypocrisy and tyranny. The Prince of Machiavel would face in the comparison. Let his official reports, and a list of the governments of which he has made part, be bound up with the Memoirs he is to publish, and there will then be little danger of a misconception of his real character, whatever ingenuity or hardihood may be employed to disguise

it.

VOL. I.

vernment, are always to be understood as having been previously resolved upon by the sovereign. Accordingly, we find a decree

of the 9th of May, signed Napoleon, which re-enacts the severest penalties of the criminal code against absentees, the enemies of the tri-coloured flag, the districts which allow it to be removed, &c.-In pursuance of the usual tactics, the prince archchancellor immediately addressed a circular to the attorneys-general of the imperial courts, exhorting them to practice the utmost severity in order " to confound seditious machinations." They are told that the offences in question are those in favour of which it is sometimes attempted to awaken an imprudent pity, but that they must not yield to this impulse; and moreover, that as each particular act of the enemies of the state, taken separately, may offer in appearance nothing reprehensible, they are to look to the ensemble of facts, and circumstances, to regulate their judgments"-a terrible discretion! The minister of police, the indefatigable Fouché, appears again in aid of the merciful decree, in a long argumentative circular to the prefects. Here, also, he strews flowers over the hallowed tomb of the Convention, harps to satiety on the old key of feudalism, and gives no quarter either to the sentiments or the persons of the unlucky royalists. He instructs the prefects to make out and deliver to the criminal courts" lists of all absentees who may be supposed to be abroad, or in armed assemblages."

Although his imperial majesty of the Thuileries had not hesitat

ed, in 1802, to stigmatize the emperor of Austria as a tyrant who uselessly exposed his subjects, for

K

.

We have, on the 8th June, as the last great solemnity of the imperial government before the departure of the Hero for the frontiers, a sitting of the two chambers of peers and representatives created under the "act additional to the Constitutions." The chamber of representatives wanted much of its complement, owing to the times, but there was a deficiency of only three or four consisting of ultra-moralists, in the chamber of peers. This body exhibited a curious spectacle as to its composition. It had many members of the old senate, also peers of Louis XVIII., and some new peers selected on account of valuable services rendered at the restoration. But the most remarkable of both chambers were the veteran republicans whom Bonaparte could not attach to his interests on his arrival from Egypt, and who had capitulated at last to the common champion of all the enemies of legitimacy;-or, as they allege, to the hope of reestablishing liberty and equality even under the beak of the imperial eagle. They now re-appear. ed upon the political stage about the throne of Bonaparte, as the personages of a dramatic piece reassemble at the dénouement; for, we may venture to hope that, with the battle of Waterloo, ended the last act of the terrible tragedy of the French revolution. Not the least interesting of the republican apparitions was Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino and bard of Charlemagne, who took his seat as president of the chamber of peers, seduced, by what motives it is difficult to say, from his dilettanti studies, after thirteen years of firm

attempting to fortify Vienna, he afterook to do the same with Paris, much less susceptible of defence than the German capital. The property of individuals was laid waste and a number of houses destroyed, in throwing up entrenchments which could only serve to insure the destruction of the city, if they inspired the idea of withstanding an attack from armies capable of turning the great fortresses of the North. A blockade at the distance of four leagues from the walls, must have been sufficient to reduce Paris by the effect of famine. The citizens were compelled to labour sturdily on these entrenchments, and had, for their best consolation, the opportunity of contemplating from time to time on their return, the sacred person of his majesty at the windows of the Thuileries. He deigned to appear at them twice a-day. and the newspapers did not fail to relate how the skies were rent with the voice of the popular enthusiasm. It was not told, however, what sums were daily paid to a select band of Stentors, to animate the admiring multitude, and that most of the shoe-blacks had deserted their profession for that of criers (crieurs) in the garden of the palace. While the inhabitants of the metropolis were thus employed in raising fortifications, at the very name of which they stood aghast, those of the provincial cities and towns were instructed to pursue the same course, by the minister of war in his circular to the civil magistrates. He advises that every hamlet, house, mill, enclosure, bridge,-every ditch be converted into a military post for the annoyance and destruction of the allies, should they effect a pas-resistance to the wiles and menaces sage into the country. The whole surface of France was to wear the aspect of an entrenched camp.

of fraternal ambition. The better genius or the vulgar tastes of the

ex-king of Holland, Louis, kept | departure was already realized, it

him snug in his retreat in Switzerland, although his name stands in the list of the peers.

As his imperial majesty had made his preparations to set out, in a few days, for the frontiers, the adieux between him and the chambers were particularly ardent and impressive. The first paragraph of his discourse is not a little curious. "For three months past circumstances and the confidence of the people have invested me with unlimited power. Today the most urgent desire of my heart is fulfilled. I come to begin the constitutional monarchy." Then follow an encomium upon monarchy; a promise to unite and regulate the scattered constitutions of the empire; a recommendation of legislative measures to quash civil war and rebellious meetings; a suggestion, that the liberty of the press is, indeed, inherent in the constitution, but that repressive laws are necessary in the actual state of the nation, and that the finances would be in a flourishing condition were it not that circumstances produced a surplus of expense. The peroration is in this strain-"It is possible that the first duty of a prince will soon call me to put myself at the head of the children of the nation to fight for the country.. The army and myself will do our duty. You, peers and representatives, be, like the senate of a great people of antiquity, resolved to die rather than survive the dishonour and degradation of France. The sacred cause of country will triumph!"

The addresses of the two chambers in reply to this discourse were not delivered until Sunday the 11th, three days after the sitting, —and there was no further time for delay-as the possibility of his

|

being fixed for four o'clock the next morning. His majesty received the deputations of his faithful chambers, at the Thuileries, amid the richest splendors of his throne. We may be excused from transcribing the expressions of gratitude and admiration, of love of liberty, and indignation at the Allies which the orators pour forth, in the fullness of their zeal and the sincerity of their hearts. But there are a couple of phrases which when viewed in connexion with the events of the last week of the same month, illustrate strikingly the spirit of the whole, and should not, therefore, be lost to our readers." The interests of France," exclaim the peers, “are, sire, inseparable from yours. If fortune should defeat your efforts, reverses, sire, would not lessen our perseverance, and would redouble our attachment to you!" "The nation," says the chamber of deputies, "is universally armed to defend her independence and reject any family and prince which others may dare to think of imposing upon her. To maintain her liberty and honour she is ready to make every sacrifice."

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The deputation of the two chambers was followed by one from the department of the Geronde, consisting of general officers and a prefect, who dealt in mementos with which his majesty would, perhaps, have cheerfully dispensed. "Sire,-All Europe aided by the hordes of Upper Asia, precipitates itself on our frontiers. They wish to blot us out of the list of nations: But-you have sworn to live free with our country, or die. We have heard this oath. We will march with our Leonidas; we will triumph.”

Besides his faithful chambers,

there was a congenial assembly of his friends-we mean the Parisian federation to whom he could not deny a tender farewell. The parting address of this body of the 11th of May, is admirably in character. "Often, sire, have we, from the most noble impulses, and in the midst of our crowded meetings, sworn to die for our country and for the emperor. Allow us, sire, by our committee, to repeat to your majesty this sacred oath which even death in whatever shape shall never make us retract. We swear to combat the enemies external and internal of our country, of your majesty and your august dynasty. Yes! we swear it before God, in the face of the whole earth: we swear it!"

On the 12th, at four o'clock in the morning, the Leonidas quitted his capital for the frontiers. What passed there will be found narrated at length in an excellent French account of his campaign, a translation of which we shall offer to the reader as a continuation of this sketch.

comes a still bolder catachresis-
"that the genius of the French
nation was always hostile to the
ambition of conquests, and, there-
fore, a sufficient guarantee for Eu-
rope, on the score of tranquillity."
In speaking of the ecclesiastical
establishment, he states, "that the
priests had become odious to all
the military whom the sentiment
of glory bound indissolubly to the
emperor, yet that his majesty
would forget their violation of
the duties which religion pre-
scribed towards the sovereign."

But the most remarkable portion of the exposé is the head of military affairs. We here, as, indeed, nearly throughout the whole, lose sight of the minister of the interior, and see alone the revolu tionary minister of war, the personage whom Bonaparte sought, and wanted, still more than the Roscius of republicans, when he called him to his councils. Never was a more profound homage, more fulsome adulation paid to any despot, than the minister of commerce and manufactures lavishes upon that awful patron of both— the French Army. The army is a host of immaculate patriots whose claims must supersede all others, and in whose favour the emperor cherished intentions the most magnificent, while he had already made prodigious efforts to repair the un

That the chambers might not want wholesome occupation, three most volumious ministerial reports were left behind to be read to them immediately after his departure. The first was an exposé of the state of the empire from the department of Carnot the minister of the interior. How-pardonable injuries which it had ever fallible the veracity of this republican on most occasions, this official exposé would fully establish the truth of the assertion contained in his Justificatory Memoir-that he had served Bonaparte with extreme zeal. He begins, in the exposition, by inveighing, as usual, in the bitterest language, against the Bourbons, and asserting that the emperor meant to govern paternally. Next

received from the Bourbons. After all, we discover their great crime on this head to have been the reduction of the army-a measure to which every government professes to resort in time of peace, and which, certainly, was never, on every account, more exigent than in France in 1814.

The statements of the exposé respecting the national force and spirit were not suffered to lag be

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