Star. — London, England, 1814-04-12 00:00:00

VI oRBNCII POLITIC4L REVIEW. " OF BONAPARTE, THE BOURBONS, AND THE Naas= OF RALLYING ROUND OUR LEGITIMATE PRINCES FOR' TILE HAPPINESS-OP FRANCE, AND THAT OF AWLQPIC ia ' EY FR. AUG. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. • The subject of this work, the name, the character, the principled' and the talents of its author, all re• co* mead lig.° the attention of the public. We shall wake a few extracts from it, which will speak its merits better than any praise we can bestow. After retracing the circumstances' which, during the Revolution, introduced and successively destroyed in France every form of republican government; after painting the cunning policy with which Bonaparte, . 'under the modest title of Consul, At first accustomed the French to feel unalarmed at his power, the au thor arrives at the period when the usurper dared to take a bolder flight and to seat himself on the throne of Kings—then describes his internal administration : Then commenced the grand saturnalia of royalty ; errmes, oppression, slavery, marched at equal pace with folly. All liberty expires ; every honourable sentiment, every generous thought, become conspi. racies against the State. To speak of virtue renders one an object of suspicion—to praise a good action, is to abuse the Prince. Words change their meaning is people fighting for their legitimate sovereigns are a rebellious people ; a traitor as a faithful subject ; all France becomes the empire of falsehood; journals, pamphlets, discourses, prose and verse, all disguise the truth. If it rained, we are assured that the sun . shone : does the tyrant appear abroad amidst a silent populace, we are told that wherever he moved, he received the acclamations of the multitude. " The sole object is the Prince, morality consists in . devoting one's self to his caprices, duty in praising him. Above all, it was necessary to bawl oat ad miration whenever he committed a.lault or perpe tmed a crime. Literary men are forted by menaces to celebrate the despot. They composed, they bar gained, as to the amount of praise ; happy when, at the expense of some common-places, about the glory of arms, tl.ey purchased the right of uttering a few ° sighs, of denouncing some crimes, of reminding peo ple of some proscribed virtues ! " No book could appear without being marked with some eulogy of Bonaparte, like the stamp of sla very ; in new editions of old authors, the censorship caused every thing to be retrenched that spoke against conquerors, tyranny, and slavery—in like manner as the Directory had entertained the design, of causing every thing to be struck out of the same authors, that spoke of monarchy and kings. The very alma- necks were tocarnioed with care, and the conscription . formed an article of faith in the catechism. In the arts, the same servitude: Bonaparte. poisons his sol diers infected with the plague at Jaffa a painting is Made which represents him, by an excess of courage and hurtraiii•y, touching these same plague infected patients. It was :let thus that St. Louis cured the sick, whom a touching and religious confidence pre sented to his royal hands. Not a word, moreover, was to be Said of public opinion—the maxim was that the Sovereign must mould it every morning. " To Bonaparte's improved police was attached a committee, charged with giving a direction to men's minds, and at the head of this committee was the director of public opinion. Imposture and silence were the grand means employed to keep the people in error. If your suns die in battle, believe you that sufficient attention would be paid to you, even to tell you what was become of them ? Events the most im portant to the country, to Europe, to the whole world were concealed trOm you. ag The enemy is at Meaux—you can only learn it by the flight of the peaSams ; you are enveloped in darkness; your alarms are madeohe subject of moc kery, your griefs of laughter, whatever you feel or thitic is despised. For once you raise your voice, a spy denounces, a gear d'annee arrests, a military com mission tries you ; jou are shot and forgotten. " It was not enough to enslave fathers, children also must be placed at the entire disposal of the tyrant. Mothers have been seen hastening from the extremi ties of the eirpire, and demanding back with floods of tears the sons whom the government had torn from their arms. 'these children were placed in schools, where they were taught, by beat of drum, irreligion,' debauchery, contempt of the domestic virtues, and blind obedience to the Sovereign. 6g The paternal authority, respected by the most frightful t) rants of antiquity, W:l5 treated by Bona parte as an abuse and a prejujice —he wished to eon vei t our sons into a via ut Mamelukes, without GOD, wili•:)ut family, and without country. It appears' tlntt this en. my of our race was bent on destroying France to its very foundations—he has more corrupt ed men, done more mischief to the human race in the short space of ten years, than all the tyrants of Rome pot together, front New down to the last persecutor of the Christians. The principles which served as the UASIS of his administration, passed from his govern-' ment into the different classes of society ; for a wicked government introduces vice, a a wise government cherishes virtue among a people. Irreligion, a taste for every enj. yment and expellee above their means, Ff....tempt of moral ties, the spirit of adventure, of vitae , ce , and o f domination, descended from the Throne into families—a little longer of such a reign, and France would have been only a den Of robbers. w The crimes of our republican revolution were the rp work or pnssions which always leave some resumes; there was then disorder, and not destruction in so ciety. Morals were injured, but not annihilated.— Conscience still had its remorse ; a des:ctive indif ference did nut e‘stifound th e innocent the guilty —thus the calamities of thOse times would have been speedily healed. But how cure the wounds inflicted by a Government which laid down despotism as a fixed principle ; which, with morality and religion in its mouth, incessantly sapped religion arittosurals by its institutions and its contempt whisfk sought to found public order, not upon moral duty and law, but 'upon force, and the spies of the police ; which affected to regard the stupor of slavery as the peace of a well - wrginized society, faithful to the habits of their anceS• cars, and silently marching in the path of ancient virtues? 44 The most terrible revolutions are preferable to ..1111ch a state of things. If civil wars produce public crimes, they at least call fos th hidden virtues, talent •, a Pct great men. It is under despotism that empii , _ TsaPPear by 'ear° ing the minds still more than tlste baski. 4.)t men , • it sooner or later superinduces (4144444)41 and col w i The admini.strataTn3to'f Bonaparte has beep boast- ed of: If administration enlist in arithntetit--if, in to neighbours. A village became bound for the con order to govern well, it be quite enough to know how script who - was born there. Little garrisons were much a province produces in corn, wine, and oil, to billetted' on the villager, and forced him to sell his `ascertain the last penny that can :be raised, the last bed to maintain them. till be had found the conscript nap that can betaken from it--undoubtedly Bona- concealed in the woods. • . pate was a great e4ministratoe; it would be . impos- 44 Absurdity was even mixed with atrocity ; sons sible more completely to oSrganise mischief, to intro- were often demanded from those who Were happy duce mere of order into calamity. But that is the enough to have no posterity ; violence was used to best administration which leaves a people in peace— discover the bearer of a name which existed only on ' which cherishes in them the sentiments of justice and the lists of the Bens d'armes, or to obtain a conscript of piety ; which is sparing of'human blood, which who had served five or six years before, Women respects the rights of the citizen, his property, and big with child have been put to the torture, that they family ; in this view the government of Bonaparte might reveal the place where their first-born was con was the worst of governments. called ; fathers have brought forth the dead body of • 44 Again, bow numerous were the faults and blun- their son, to prove that they could no longer produce ders even in his own sistem ! An Administration this son alive. There still remained some families the most expensive engulphed the revenues of the whose children were ransomed by their wealth, and ' State. Whole armies of douaniers and receivers de- who looked forward one day to become magistrates, voured the taxes they were employed to levy. There administrators, men of science, landholders, so useful was not even a chef de bureau, however insignificant, to social order in a great country : by the decree for who hid not five or six clerks. the guards of honour, they were swept away in the i. Bonaparte appeared to have declared war against general massacre. Such a contempt was entertained commerce. if arty branch of industry arose in for the life of man, and for France, that it was even France, he laid hold of it, and took it wholly into customary to call conscripts the raw material, and his own hands. Tobacco, salt, wool, colonial pro- food for cannon. duce—all was• with him the object of an odious 46 The following great question was discussed monopoly; he had becOme the only merchant in his among the purveyors of human flesh, namely, to as. empire ! • certain the given average time that a conscript might g‘ This restless and extravagant man was daily last: some alleged that he lasted thirty-three months, harassing a people who wanted only repose, - with others thirty-six months. Bonaparte was Wont to contradictory and often impracticable decrees ; he say to himself ' /Nacre three hundred thousand men iis re violated at night the law which he had made in the serve.' In the eleven years of his reign, he caused morning. In ten years, he devoured 15,000 millions more than five millions of Frenchmen to perish, of imposts, which exceeds the amount of taxes raised which exceeds the number of those which our civil during the 70 years of the reign of Louis XIV.-- wars swept awny during three centuries, under the ' The spoils of the world, 1,500 millions of revenue, reigns of John, Charles V. Charles VI. Charles VII. were not enough for him; he was solely occupied with Henry 11. Francis 11. Charles IX. Henry 111 and swelling his treasury by means the most iniqeitous. Henry IV. In the twelve months which have just Every prefect, every sub-prefect, every mayor, had elapsed, Bonaparte raised (without reckoning the na the right of augmenting the customs of cities, of im- Lionel guard) 1,n30,000, which is more than one posing additional centimes on the towns, villages, hundred thousand per month ; and yet some men and hamlets„ ‘ and of demanding from any landholder had the audacity to tell him he had only expended an arbitrary sum for any pretended want. All France the super Lions population ! was under pillage. Bodily infirmities, indigence, 44 But the loss of men WAS not the greatest evil at dtath, education, the arts, the sciences—all paid tri- tending the conscription : it tended to replunge us bute to the Prince. You had a son, perhaps, who and all - Europe besides'iuto barbarism. By the con. was lame, a crple incapable of service—a law of scription, trades, arts, and letters are infallibly de, the conscription compelled you to pay I,5(0 francs, stroyed. A young man, .who must die at eighteen, by way of consolation for this misfortune. Some- can never apply himself to any study. Neighbour times a sick conscript died before having undergone ing nations, compelled in self-defence to resort to the the examination of the recruiting captain ; one might same means with us, were abandoning in their turn suppose that in such case the father would be exempt the advantages of civilization ; and all nations preci. from paying the 1,500 francs for a subttitute—hy no pitated one upon another, as in the age of the Goths means. It the declaration of sickness was made be- and Vandals, would have seen the calamities of those tore the event of death, the conscript being alive at aces revive. By breaking to pieces the ties of gene the moment of the declaratioh, the father was coin- rel society, the conscription also annihilated those of pelled to pay down the sum on the grave of his son. domestic life. Accustomed from their cradles to re . ~ Was the poor man desirous of giving some cdu- gard themselves as victims devoted to death, ehil caiicer to one of his sons, he must pay 800 francs dren no longer obeyed their parents; they became to the university, without reckoning the expense of idle vagabonds and debauchees, in expectation of the board, &c.. given to the master. day when they were to march and pillage the world. " Did a modern 'author quote an ancient author, What principle of religion or morals had time to take as the works of the latter had fallen into what was root in their hearts ? Fathers and mothers, on the called . 46 public domain," he was obliged to pay to other hand, among the lower orders, no longer at the censorship five sous per line of quotatioM. It tacked their affections, no longer bestowed their cares while you quoted you also translated, you. only paid on children whom they must prepare to lose, who no li sous per line, because the quotation then consti- longer formed their wealth and their staff of support, ruled a' sort of 4 , mixed domain," one half belong- and who had become for them only a grief and a ing t ) the labour of the living translator, and the burthen. Hence that hardness of heart, that oblivion other half to the dead author. of every sentiment of nature, which lead to selfish , 4 , When Bonaparte caused food to be distributed ness, to recklessness of good or evil, to indifference ! among the poor in the winter of 1811, it was believed for country ; which obliterate conscience and remorse, ' that he would employ his savings in this charity : and devote a people to servitude, by equally strip. but on that occasion, be levied additional centimes, ping it of the horror of vice and the admiration of and gained four millions on the soup of paupers. virtue. 4. In short, we saw him turn undertaker, and mo- 41 Such was the administration of Bonaparte in re. nopolise the administration of funerals: it was worthy gard to the interior of France." of the destroyer of the French to raise a tax upon dead bodies; and how could any apex ii to the pro tection of the laws, when it was he who made them? The Legislative Budy dared once to speak, and 'it was diss,.lved. " A single article in the new codes destroyed pro perty by its very roots. An administrator of do mains could say to you—" Your property is domai nial or national. I place it provisionally under se-. questration : you may go and try your rights ; if the administration is wrong, your property will be re stored to you." And to whom then must you resort in this cause ? To the ordinary tribunals ? No: such causes were reserved for the examination of the Council of State, and tried before the Emperor, who was both judge and party. . " If property was uncertain, civil liberty was still less secure. Was there ever any thing more mon strous than that commission appointed to inspect the prisons, and under the report of which, a man might be detained his whole life in a dungeon, without in dictment, without trial, without judgment, put to the.torture, shot by night, or strangled between two shutters? Amidst all this, Bonaparte was nominating every year commissions for the liberty of the press, and tor personal liberty. Tiberius himself never made Such a mockery of the human species. " But the Conscription was, as it were, the cope stone of these works of despotism. Scandinavia itself, styled by an historian, the workshop of the human race, would have been unable to furnish men for this homicidal law. -The code of the conscription' will remain an eternal monument of the reign of Bo naparte ; there may be found collected all that the most subtle and ingenious tyranny can devise to torment and devour the people : —ic is truly the code of hell. , g , The generations of France were placed in regular rows for the axe, like the trees of a forest; every year 80,000 young men were cut down. But this was only the regular average of deaths; the conscription was often doubled, or reinforced by extraordinary levies ; often it devoured beforehand its destined victims, like a dissipated heir who borrows on his future income. At last they were taken even without estimate ; the legal age, the qualities requisite for dying on a field of battle, were no longer regarded, and the law dis played, in this respect, a marvellous facility, it de wended to infancy, it ascended to sild age; the dis char ed soldier, the man who had a substitute, were e, xt y taken ; the son of a poor artisan, perhaps ran. s. , d thrice, even at the expense of his father's little property, was compelled to march ; maladies, infir mities, bodily, defects, were no longer a protection. Moveable columns traversed our provinces like an enemy's country, to tear from the people their last children. 'ln default ei a brother absent, the brother ,'resent was taken. The father was made to answer for the son, the wife fpr the husband : responsibility was extended to the ;tog distant relative: : and even FRENCH PAPERS. RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. PARIS, APRIL 7, 1814. The Constitution has been presented to the Senate. It was read twice, and a Commission appointed to consider it. The Commission having made its report on the sth of April, at eight o'clock in the evening, the Constitution as adopted unanimously. Louis StAnislaus Xavier is restored to the wishes of the French by a Constitutional Charter, equally advantageous to the people and the Royal Family destined to govern them. Before such great news all other intelligence fades away. But it is our duty to give an account of the events that preceded it. CORRESPONDENCE WITH MARSHAL MARMON 1, Here follows a letter, dated April 3d, from the Prince of Schwartzenberg to Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa, inviting him to accede to the De- CM:" by which Napoleon Bonaparte is declared to have fin feited the Throne, and to pass with his troops under the new Government. Marshal Marmont, in his reply to the Prince, ex presses his willingness to contribute to the interests . of France, which have ever been his first wish ; I ;itt requires as a guarantee-- That all troops quitting the standard of N.tdc,- leon Bonaparte shall have leave to pasS frt . •. , !nto Normandy : And that if the events of the war shall place Bonaparte a prisoner in the hands of the Allies, the Prince shall guarantee his life and safety, and that he shall be sent to a country chosen by the Allied Powers and the French Government." In reply to this letter the Prince of Schwartzenberg accedes to the demand of a guarantee, promises lite and safety to Napoleon Bonaparte, and compliments the Marshal upon the generosity of his cirtracter. Marshal Marmont then passed with his corps of 12,000 men within the lines of the Allies. Next follows a letter from General Liic.tte to h;s corps, dated Corbeil, sth April, in which lie says— " the Emperor Napoleon has announced to the a: my that, being considered as the only obstacle to peair, he is ready to renounce his crown in favour of his sin and the Empress Regent : he therefore requires his troops to preserve order and wait the event." LETTER OF MARSHAL NEY TO TALLEYRAND. This is succeeded by the following letter from Mar shal Ney, Prince of Moskwa, to the Prince of Bene vento, Chief of the Provisional Government ; " My Lor4,—l proceeded to Paris yesterday with Marshal the Duke of Taunt= and the Duke of Vi .en;a, with full powers to the Emperor of Russia to defend the interests, of the dynasty of the Emperor Nd• An unfpresetn even; broke or the peecia tions, which seemed at first to promise a favowab'n termination. From that time I saw that to SAVE out dear country from the frightful evils of civil war, it remained only for the French to embrace the cause of our ancient Kings, and I repaired to.night to the Em peror Napoleon to manifest this wish. The Emperor, convinced of the critical situation in which he had placed France, and the impossibility of saving her himself, has appeared disposed to resign, and to give in his full and entire abdication. To. morrow I hope to have from him the formal and au thentic act, and shall soon afterwards have the honour of waiting upon your Lordship. I am, 3cc. (Signed) Prince of &lemma. Fontainebleau, April 5, half past eleven at night. To the above letter succeeds the act of adherence of the Metropolitan Chapter to the decree of forfeitUt The first signature is that of Cardinal Maury I Arch. bishop of Paris. PARIS, APRIL 6. ADDRESS OF THE.PROVISIONAL GOVERNNIENT TO TIIF PEOPLE. People of France—When you came nut of a state of civil discord, you chose for your chief a man who appeared upon the stage of the universe with the character of grandeur : you placed in him all your hopes. Those hopes were v iin. Upon the ruins of anarchy he Wit only despotismt. He ought at least hom.gratitudeto have become French with you. He never was. He never ceased to undertake, without motive and object, unjust w ars, "like an adventurer who would become famous. In a few years he has devoured your 'wealth and your population. Every family is in mourning ; all.Franee in tears' he is deaf to our miseries. gven yet perhaps .ho dreams of gigantic designs, though unheard of reverses punish so signally the. pride and abuse uf victory. He never knew how to reign either in the national Interest nor even in the interest of his own despotism s he has destroyed all that he ought to create, and le created all that he tinight to destroy : he relied only upon force : force now overwhelms him just reward of senseless ambition. At length this unexampled tyranny has ceaseds the Allied Powers have entered the capital of France. Napoleon governed us like a King of barbarians: A.exander, and his magnaniznous Allies, speak only the language of honour, justice, and humanity ; they have just reconciled Lurope tu a brave and unhappy people, _ _ _ People of France ! the senate has declared, th4t Napoleon has forfeited as Throne. The country is so longer with him. Another order of things can aloe* save it. We have known the excesses of popular licentiousness and absolute power ; lot us restore the real Monarchy in limiting„hrwlse laws, the di/relent powers that compose it. Let exhausted agriculture're-flourish under a pater. nal Throne ; let commerce, bound in fetters, resume her treedom ; let out youth be no looser cut off by arm: before they have the strength es bear them ps•do let the order of nature be,no longer interrupted ; end let the old men hope to die before their chiliren Men of France, let us rally ; past calamities are finished, and peace will put an end to the subversion of Europe. The August Allies have given weir word—France will rest from her long agitation, and better enlightened by the double proof of anarchy and despotism, will find happiness in the return ut a tu telary Go mrhment. ACTS OF THE PROVISIONAL CIOVERNKINT. The Provisional Goverernest, haring wkh grief that obstacles have been made to the reiuro of the Pope to his torriturws, art% deploring that continuance of insult w. ielt bas so wog over irlielmed the courageous Head whom the Chetah demands, ut• dets that every obstacle MO Inunedssdr, and that all due ho. pours be paid him nn his journey. The Civil and Military dthciriiiite are charged with the tee. cotton of the present deer.-e. Given at Paris, April 1814. The Provisionrj Government considering how pillow it is In itself, and conteari to the conventions which ba4 preceded the departure of his Majesty the King of Spain, to keep at ilerpisnon his brother tke Infant Dun Carlo., ur.ter, that the Fiume be CCM. ducsed as soon as passible, with aU the losers due to his mois t to the first Spanish post. Given at Pans, April 2, 1214. THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT DECRFE,— 1. that all the emblems, cypher,, and arms which have cha racterised the Government of iLinaparte, shall be suppreued aLd effaced, wherever they exist. Q. That this suppression shall be executed eaclusivtly by p-r -sons delegated by the authority of the Police, or the Municipa lity, withoat the zeal of individuals assisting in it, ur prevesit log it. 3. That no address, proclamation, public journal, or rive!, writing, contain injurioua expressions against :he Gov•rnmvnt ovtrthrown, the came of the country being too noble to adopt such means! • IMPERIAL. COURT OF }YAM The Imperial Court has aiopted the fullowing Decree : The Court, feetng all the value of the efibrts which have at leng.h delivered France from a tyrai'u.ic yoke : Penetrated with respect and admit - aloe' for the august Scots reigns, who are the models of disinterestedness and magnanimity: Lapresaing a 1,,, their profound love for the noble raced Kluge who, for eight centuries, have constituted the happiness of Fian.e, and who, alone, can bring back peace, orcive, and justice, in • country to whicu the secret wiwhew ut 411 have never ceawed tit invoke the lawful Suverrigns ; Decree, That they adhere unanimously to the Decree of Dv* thronement of Bonaparte and his family, pronounced hy a Decree of time Senate of the 3.lllllMiflt,—AND I hA r, VAITNFUL Ta INti ft/NUMMI( fa%‘, LAWS In IXL KINGDOM. Thar Inbille Wll* ALL TUMID REMIT TOO IaTOUN or I Mt MEAD Or I 111 111416.14 or Bouts** To Tat HCIII.I3II^ANY l'llmON or Sr. Louis. 'llse Fire eresWent, ( s igned) BF.GUIER. BONAPARTE'S LAST BULLETIN. This Paper of which the following is a translation, was posted up at Rennes, the sth instant : The Bulletin, composed at Troyes, could not appear in the Paris Journals, the enemy's army' having marched upon that city. The Emperor directed t 'reed marches from Troyes on Paris. On the it of March his Majesty was at Fontaintleau, there 'll@ learnt that the enemy, having arrived 14 hours before him, occupied Paris, after having encountered a strwg resistance, in which he suffered great Buss. " The occupation of the capital by the enemy is a misfortune which deeply Allicis the heart of hislsr.t. jestv, from which, however, there is nothing to Apt preheid. The presence of the Emperor and his army 4 the gates of Paris, will prevent the enemy trona committing his usual excesses in so populous a city, which it is impossible to retain wimout rendering hit position evtremelf dangerous. Besides, it prevents him from detaching any thine but light troops for in. testing the neighbouring departments. " The corps • .f this Dukes of Treviso and Rat , ,irca and that of General Compirns, which had joined :or the deem of the capital, wort' mited betw,Ns i