CHAPTER LI.

CELEBRATED MECHANICS-NATIONAL REVERSES

NAPOLEON'S DOWNFALL.

HERE are many names which we might have enumerated in our cycle of talented manufacturers, whose labours have sustained and augmented the glory of the mechanic arts. We might, for instance, have made mention of Kochlin, distinguished as a cotton printer; Chevenard and Sallandrouze as makers of carpets and curtains; Jacob Desmalter, universally known for his furniture; Bordier Marcet, for his improvements in lighting rooms, and many others whose names stood at the head of arts and manufactures during the empire. But all these will find a place in our work, when, in the progressive march of French industry, we reach that portion included in the period between 1814 and the present day.

Every one is well acquainted with the calamities which accompanied the latter years of Napoleon's reign,-putting a stop to manufactures and trades of every description. There was no more business, no more improvement in the arts; commerce was in a languishing condition. The whole of our national activity seemed to be concentrated upon our arsenals and weaponmaking establishments. Our reverses in Spain; the disastrous campaign in Russia; the traitorous defection of our allies, and the invasion of France by the northern hordes, were so many successive blows at all branches of industry. After a truly marvellous struggle, in which Napoleon displayed all the resources of military science, and in which he overcame the enemy twenty times, he found himself, although weakened by the effect of his victories, still in a condition to oppose all Europe,

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But what froce

at the head of his brave and faithful soldiers. could not accomplish, was, in the end, consummated by treason and dark diplomacy. The gates of Paris were opened to the enemy; and the emperor, to prove his devotion to France, renounced, for himself and his heirs, the throne which he had made so glorious. He who had elevated this throne; he who had reestablished peace among us, and dispersed factions; who had lifted the crown from the dust, as has been energetically said, was imprisoned in a little island in the Mediterranean by the very kings and emperors who had met with such generous treatment at his hands. He was stigmatized with the name of usurper!

Then ensued his brilliant return from Elba, and the general enthusiasm excited by his rapid passage through the country. Thousands of descriptions have been given, and will still continue to be given of the great events of the new reign of one hundred days.

The battle-eagle again spread his wings over opposing armies; and, for two entire days, filled them with astonishment, and obliged them to yield to his victorious thunders. But the fatal hour was not yet arrived. The great man was destined to fall again. A panic seized upon our youthful soldiers; they fled in disorder, as on the fatal fields of Crécy, Agincourt, and Poitiers. The English and the Prussians could scarcely credit their own triumph; and this victory's first infidelity decided Napoleon's fate for ever.

The emperor did not wish to survive this catastrophe. He threw himself, sword in hand, into a battalion; but the flying cannon-balls appeared to respect him. His generals and staffofficers seized his horse's bridle, and obliged him to follow them at a gallop.

At the battle of Waterloo the old imperial guard sustained the former French glory by their heroic devotion to their emperor's cause. It was at the most desperate part of the conflict. "Cambronne," says M. Alexander Dumas, "interposed himself

with the second battalion of the first regiment of light infantry between the English cavalry and the fugitives, and forming a square, drew the enemy's attention to himself and his battalion alone; and, closely surrounded and pressed on all sides, he fought until obliged to surrender. Upon this occasion he made use, not of the flowery phrase ascribed to him, but of a single word, a soldier's expression, it is true, but one whose energy is as remarkable as its simplicity; and immediately fell, wounded in the head by the explosion of a shell."

The disasters of Waterloo reopened the road to Paris, to the allied powers; Napoleon's downfall was established, and the Bourbons again took possession of the throne.

One of the earliest measures of the royal government was the disbanding of the troops, upon whose fidelity there was now no dependence to be placed. All the warriors, young and old, were to be seen following the roads to their respective native villages. Bitter were the tears which rolled down their weatherbeaten cheeks, as these brave soldiers departed from under the French banners. It was not without a sort of rage that they thought of their emperor's fate; their future prospects destroyed; their dreams of glory vanished. Nothing now remained for them but to return to the paternal plough.

On the 16th of October, 1815, Napoleon, in virtue of the commands of the sovereigns, united in the Holy Alliance, landed at the island of Saint Helena, where his jailers were to be his most implacable enemies, the English.

By enchaining the hero upon this rock in the midst of the ocean, the traitorous members of the British cabinet knew that they were pronouncing his death-warrant. They wished to inflict a slow torture upon him. Their cruel wish was realized. By the 5th of May, 1821, all was over!

Napoleon, before he died, dictated the following words, words so touching in his condition of a dying exile:

"I desire that my remains may lie upon the banks of the

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Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well."

Whilst I am writing these lines, this wish, expressed nearly twenty years ago, is on the point of being put into execution. Moved, no doubt, by one of those Machiavellian afterthoughts which are always so familiar to her, especially with regard to France, the English government has at last decided to set at liberty the illustrious ashes of her glorious victim. Before long the French people will be able to pay a funeral homage to the great man who conquered all the nations of Europe; and, what is no less singular, Napoleon's remains are brought home in triumph by a prince of the royal family of Bourbon!

CHAPTER LII.

THE RESTORATION.

ITH the re-establishment of the Bourbons upon the throne of France commenced a new era of prosperity to our arts and sciences. The peace so ardently longed for after the long and calamitous wars, and now insured to us for some time

by the union of all the European powers, caused our old workshops and manufactories to be opened, and many new ones to be built, and excited a spirit of emulation among manufacturers and tradesmen of every description. Circumstances in general, as well as the government itself, acted favourably upon this onward march: circumstances, by the numerous markets opened to French goods in every direction; government, by wise measures suited to the necessities of the times, and, by a judicious distribution of rewards, doing honour to French munificence.

This revival, effected during the restoration, is, notwithstanding the efforts of many to promote a very different opinion, a matter of most undeniable fact.

That learned professor of political economy, M. Blanqué, senior, appears to have formed a just appreciation of the great manufacturing movement which took place at that epoch. "Compare," says he, "France at the present day to what she was twenty years ago, overwhelmed with the weight of her glory and her misfortunes; it is like an entirely new country; it has been sufficient for the hand of man but to touch the surface of the soil, in order to extract from it riches of greater value than any ever produced in the most prosperous days of antiquity. A manufacturing population has sprung up as if by enchantment;