XXXIII. 1837. CHAP. bravely won. At the head of the assaulting column the officers, even of the highest grade, were seen: Colonel Serignay was killed at the head of his battalion; Generals Perregaux and Lamoricière, and Colonel Combes, were severely wounded. In the midst of the tumult a mine was fired, and great numbers, both of the assailants and defenders, were blown into the air. But the supports were rapidly brought up; a continual stream of armed men ascended the breaches, and at length the steady courage of the Arabs yielded to the heroic intrepidity of the French. Gradually the besieged were forced backward; house after house, street after street, bastion after bastion, was successively won; and at length the armed multitude, forced to the extremity of the town, was driven over the ramparts, and a frightful human avalanche rolled over the cliffs which formed the southern defence of the city. Constantine was taken, and the French power in Algeria firmly established. From the summit of a neighbouring hill Sultan Achmet beheld, 358, 359; with tears in his eyes, the capture of his capital, the ruin 269, 270. of his power, and, turning his horse's head, fled into the solitudes of the desert.1 1 General Vallée's Desp., Oct. 13, 1837; Cap. ix. L. Blanc, v. 123. the army. In this desperate strife the Duke de Nemours exhiHeroism of bited the coolness of a veteran joined to the ardour of a young soldier. Colonel Combes was brought to him mortally wounded; two shots had passed through his lungs. Concealing his suffering and danger, he said, "Those who are not wounded mortally will feel joy at this success." To General Boyer he said, "Receive my last adieu; I ask nothing for my wife or children, but I would recommend the following officers of my regiment." These were his last words. Death closed his lips. After a short time had elapsed, the desolation of the storm disappeared, and such of the inhabitants as survived returned to their houses; the breaches were repaired, a garrison of 2500 men was left in the place, and the army returned to Bona. General Vallée was made Governor of Algeria and a XXXIII. 1837. Marshal with the general approbation of the army, and CHAP. an extensive promotion rewarded the inferior officers who had contributed to the success. But while the army had thus gloriously discharged its duty, the conduct of the Chamber of Deputies afforded a melancholy proof of the sway of parsimonious ideas among them, and how unworthy the bourgeois class was to rule the empire. Government proposed to the Chamber of Deputies to settle a pension of 10,000 francs (£400) a-year on General Damremont's widow: they reduced it to 6000 francs (£240); and to the widow of the heroic Colonel Combes they refused even the moderate pension of 3000 francs (£120), proposed by the Government! economy was the more discreditable that at the same 119, 193; time the Chamber voted 1,200,000 francs (£48,000) 358, 359; a-year to the theatres of Paris for the amusement of 270, 271. themselves and their constituents.1* This 1 Ann. Hist. xxi. 117, Cap. ix. L. Blanc, v. ary govern "It was the fashion," says Macaulay, "to call James 124. II. a tyrant, and William a deliverer; yet before the Reason of deliverer had been a month on the throne, he had de- revolutionthe rigour of prived the English of a precious right which the tyrant ments. had respected. This is a kind of reproach which a government sprung from a popular revolution almost inevitably incurs. From such a government men naturally think themselves entitled to expect a more gentle and liberal administration than is expected from old and deeply-rooted power. Yet such a government, having, as it always has, many active enemies, and not having the strength derived from legitimacy and prescription, can at first only maintain itself by a vigilance and a severity of which old and deeply-rooted power stands in * SUMS VOTED TO THE THEATRES IN 1838. 620,000 francs, or £25,000 240,000 10,000 2,600 10,400 XXXIII. 1837. 1 Macau lay's Hist. iii. 48. CHAP. no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are sometimes necessary, yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty, and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective." 1 Louis Philippe was no exception to of England, these just and forcible observations; on the contrary, they furnish the true explanation both of the increased rigour of his Government and the unbounded animosity which it excited among its former supporters. A very simple reason explains both-it was necessity. A government which has risen by revolution can only maintain itself by suppressing the spirit from which it sprang; and the more violent that revolution has been, the more severe and lasting will be the measures of repression to which it must have recourse. England will feel the consequences of the Revolution of 1688 as long as the National Debt endures; France that of 1830 as long as its huge standing army is kept on foot, and that is not likely ever to be diminished. Had any of the early conspiracies against Louis Philippe's government proved successful, the only consequence would have been that the liberties of the country would have been more completely prostrated even than they were by the bayonets of the Citizen King. A Cabinet composed of Fieschi, Alibaud, and Meunier would only have been distinguished from those of Count Molé or M. Thiers by being more despotic, more expensive, and more bloody. 125. cendant now the Cross over the Crescent. A great revolution was going on in the affairs of the Lasting as world when France was the theatre of these convulsive throes. From the contests of the European states with each other, emerged a Power which soon came to overshadow all the other countries of the world. Ever since the date of the fall of Napoleon all the great conquests of nations were those of the Christians over the Mahommedans; from the infidelity of the French Revolution arose the lasting superiority of the Cross over the XXXIII. 1837. Crescent. In 1816, Algerine slavery was terminated by CHAP. the cannon of Lord Exmouth; in 1829, Turkey narrowly escaped subjugation at the hands of the Muscovites; in 1830, the power of France was permanently established on the coast of Africa; in 1832, the Grand Seignior was only saved from destruction at the hand of his rebellious vassal by the dangerous protection of the Russians; in 1840, that very vassal was driven, by the broadsides of the English, delivered at the foot of the Lebanon, within his own dominion. Hardly had the sound of the French cannon ceased to re-echo in the mountains of the Atlas, when the British guns were heard in the Kyber Pass amid the Himalaya snows, and their standards were seen in Ghuznee, the cradle of Mahommedan power in Central Asia. Subsequent events have not belied these appearances; all the interests of the world are now wound up in the East. The greatest strife which modern Europe has witnessed has occurred on the shores of the Euxine, between powers contending for the protection of the decrepit Mahommedan conquerors of the East. There is something in these marvellous events succeeding one another so rapidly, and so different from the former balance of the Cross and the Crescent, which cannot be ascribed to chance; they betoken a decided step in the Divine administration. The tide of conquest, which long flowed from east to west, has now set in in an opposite direction; civilisation is returning to the land of its birth, and the descendants of Japhet, in the words of primeval prophecy, are about to "dwell in the tents of Shem." END OF VOL. V. |