XXXIV. 1840. not be insulted by impure and hypocritical homage. CHAP. Glory and liberty should stand erect beside the coffin of Napoleon. The traitors must disappear from the country. Banished from my country, I should not have complained had I been the only unfortunate; but the glory and honour of the country were exiled with me. Frenchmen! we will re-enter it together. To-day, as three years ago, I come to devote myself to the popular cause. If chance caused me to fail at Strasbourg, an Alsatian jury proved that I had not miscalculated the feelings of the country. When one enjoys the honour of being at the head of such a people as the French, there is a certain way to do great things, and that is to will them. At present there is nothing to be found in France but violence on one side and license on the other. I wish, in surrounding myself with the most eminent in the country without exception, and in supporting the interests and wishes of the masses, to form an imperishable edifice. I wish to give to France true alliances, a solid peace, and not to cast it into the perils of a general war. Frenchmen! I see before me a brilliant future for the country. I feel behind me the shade of the Emperor, which impels me forward. I will not stop till I have regained the sword of Austerlitz, and replaced the nations under our standards, 177, 178. the people in its rights. Vive la France!" 1 1 Cap. x. 81. the enter Aug. 6. Solitary in thought, taciturn in habit, Louis Napoleon had communicated with no one when he planned this Failure of audacious enterprise; he took council of himself and his prise. own intrepidity, and trusted in his star alone. He was accompanied by General Montholon, Colonels Parquin and Vaudrey, and thirty-six other inferior officers. During the voyage the young Prince, like his uncle in the voyage from Elba, frequently harangued his followers; he wore a greatcoat and boots similar to the Emperor's, and held his sword in his hand. At one in the morning of the 6th Aug. 6. August, the steamboat approached the little harbour of XXXIV. 1840. CHAP. Vimeroux, and the whole party, numbering in all sixty persons, soon after disembarked on the sands. A proclamation was immediately placarded, which bore: "The dynasty of the Bourbons of Orleans has ceased to reign ; the French people have regained their rights; the troops are absolved from their oaths of fidelity; the Chamber of Peers and Deputies is dissolved. A national congress shall be assembled on the arrival of Prince Napoleon at Paris: M. Thiers, President of the Council, is named President of the Provisional Government. Marshal Clausel is appointed commander-in-chief of the troops at Paris ; General Pajol retains the command of the first military division; all the chiefs of corps who shall not immediately yield obedience to these commands shall be dismissed. All the officers and sub-officers who shall energetically demonstrate their sympathy with the national cause, shall receive dazzling rewards. Vive la France !" In addition to this 179, 180; proclamation, the party were provided with an eagle which Napoleon; had been trained to fly to the top of a column; and when xxiii. 271. let go at the foot of the pillar on the heights of Boulogne, flew to the top, and spread its wings there.1 1 Cap. x. Procès de Ann. Hist. 82. the enter prise. The omen, however, proved fallacious, or rather it was Failure of premature; the imperial eagle was curbed in its flight on this occasion. Having effected their disembarkation without opposition, the conspirators dispersed without difficulty a company of douaniers who appeared to obstruct their passage, and having entered Boulogne, they made straight for the barracks of the 42d regiment, from whom they expected support. Everything depended on their fidelity; had they joined the Imperialists, the whole garrison would have followed the example, and it was all over with the government of Louis Philippe. Already the guard at the gate manifested symptoms of vacillation at the announcement of Louis Napoleon, and a few seconds more would have led to a revolt, when Captain Puyzellier, having come up in haste to the spot, had influence enough with his men to retain them in their allegiance. In the XXXIV. 1840. scuffle Prince Louis drew his pistol and shot a grenadier. CHAP. Finding, however, that the military were not to be shaken in their allegiance, the band retired, still in good order, from the barracks, and marched towards the upper part of the town in hopes of rousing the citizens to join them. They found the gates, however, closed against them, and being unable to force them open with strokes of the hatchet, they were obliged to retire, and took post around the column, on the summit of which they displayed the tricolor flag. 1 Procès de Driven from thence, they made for their boats on the beach. L. NapoThey were pursued, however, and made prisoners without Hist. xxiii. further bloodshed; and so terminated the second attempt Chron. of Prince Louis to regain the Imperial throne.1 leon; Ann. 270-274, and sen Oct. 6. Taught by experience, the French Government did not 83. again repeat the folly of a trial of the conspirators by jury, His trial, or simply banishing Prince Louis from France, leaving him tence of imto prosecute his designs elsewhere. He was brought before prisonment. the House of Peers with his followers, in October, and after a short trial, sentenced to imprisonment for life in a fortress within the kingdom, while his associates were condemned, some to transportation, others to imprisonment for very long periods. As they were all convicted on the clearest evidence of an attempt to overturn the Government by open force, and this was the second occasion on which Prince Louis had made the attempt, these sentences must be regarded as extremely moderate, and such as reflected. no small lustre on the humane administration of Louis Philippe. Prince Louis was soon after conducted to Ham, where he was confined in the same apartments which had formerly been occupied by Prince Polignac. He abated nothing of his intrepid bearing before the Chamber of Peers, and had the magnanimity to take upon himself the whole responsibility of the enterprise. "I had no accomplices," said he; "alone I conceived the enterprise: no one was acquainted either with my designs, my hopes, or my If I am to blame towards any, it is to my own friends; yet I trust they will not accuse me of having resources. XXXIV. 1840. CHAP. lightly compromised courage and devotion such as theirs. They will understand the motives which have not permitted me to reveal even to them the extent of the reasons I had to hope for success. I represent before you, gentlemen, a principle, a cause, a defeat. The principle is that of the sovereignty of the people, the cause is that of the Empire, the defeat is Waterloo! You have recognised the principle; you have served the cause; the defeat would avenge! No! there is no disaccord betwixt you and me; and I will not believe that I am doomed to bear the penalty of the defections of others." 1 1 Procès de L. Napo leon; Ann. Hist. xxii. 289; Vie de l'Napoleon, i. 39, 41. 84. cial results. you The next six years of his life were spent by Prince His lite in Louis in strict seclusion, conversing only in books with the prison, and its benefi-illustrious of former ages. Such converse is more strengthening to the mind than intercourse with the living, who are generally pigmies compared to the giants of past time; and many a man who has ultimately risen to greatness, has traced it to the fortunate calamities which for a season chained him to thought and study and reflection. Prince Louis was no exception to this rule; and much of the splendour of his future career may be traced to an event which, for the present, seemed to have altogether blasted his hopes. Nor was he without encouragement even at the moment from the most eminent men of his time. Béranger wrote to him in prison, "May you one day, Prince, be in a situation to consecrate to our common country the fruit of the experience you have acquired, and will yet obtain." And Chateaubriand, ever the first to show respect to courage in misfortune, wrote to him on 16th June 1844 Prince, in the midst of your misfortunes, you have studied with as much sagacity as force the causes of a Revolution which, in modern Europe, has opened the career of royal calamities. Your love of liberty, your June 16, courage and your sufferings, would give you every claim de L. Napo- to my support, if, to be worthy of your esteem, I did not 41. feel that I ought to remain faithful to the misfortunes of Henry V. as I am to the glory of Napoleon." 2 2 Chateaubriand au Prince Louis, 1840; Vie leon, i. 40, 66 XXXIV. 85. Darmès to the King. Oct. 17. Another of the murderous attempts which had so often CHAP. disgraced France of late years occurred in this autumn, 1840. and revealed the intensity of the fanatical passions which burned under the apparently smooth surface of society. Attempt of On the 17th October, as the King was coming from t St Cloud to assist at a council of his Ministers, at the angle of the Place Louis XV., just when he had lowered the sash of the window of his carriage to salute the guard, the discharge of a pistol close at hand was suddenly heard, and the carriage was filled with smoke. No one was injured by the discharge, and on looking out of the window the King saw a man crouching behind one of the lions which decorate that superb Place. He was immediately arrested, with the smoking carbine still in his hand, and conducted to the nearest police-office. His first words were, "Cursed carbine! I took a good aim, but it was too strongly charged." Being interrogated by the prefect, the following strange answers were made by him. to the interrogatories: "What is your name?-Marius Edouard Darmès. What is your age ?-Forty-three. Where were you born?—At Marseilles. What is your profession?-A conspirator. That is not a profession.Well, put down I live by my labour. What induced you to commit so odious a crime,—have you any accomplices?—I have no accomplices: my motive was to slay the greatest tyrant of ancient or modern times. Do you not repent of having conceived and executed so abominable à crime?-I repent only of not having succeeded in it. Have you long entertained the design of murdering the King ?-Only an hour before I put it in execution." It is easy to see here the influence of the secret societies and revolutionary publications which had come to exercise so fatal an influence on the minds of the Ann. Hist. working classes, in which the killing of a king was repre- 294; Monisented as the highest of the civic virtues.1 Notwithstand- 17, 1840; ing his being caught in the fact, and the King having nar- 187. rowly escaped with his life, the humanity of the sovereign 1 xxiii. 293, teur, Oct. Cap. x. 186, |