# France since 1814/Chapter 1

FRANCE SINCE 1814
CHAPTER I
TWO BEGINNINGS OF ONE PERIOD, 1814-1815
It would be difficult to exaggerate the profound difference between the Restoration of 1814 and that of 1815. In 1814 the dominant feeling in France was a general lassitude. The country had awakened from a splendid dream which little by little had assumed the aspect of a hideous nightmare. A quarter of a century had passed since the day when the States-General, transformed into the National Assembly, had inaugurated a Revolution which was meant to organise happiness for everybody, with the result that everybody was steeped in glory and tragedy and nobody was happy. More serious still, a general impression existed that ​all these immense efforts had failed to produce any stability whatever, and that the colossal god so elaborately constructed actually had feet of clay. Thanks to the recoil of these twenty-five years — years so tempestuous and overcharged with events — the image of the old Monarchy loomed larger; men saw in it a certain immobile and superb beauty, and many a time they regretted that they had found no way to better its imperfections and make terms with it. After all, it had in it a principle of stability which would have enabled France to escape the abysses into which, one after another, she had plunged and all but perished.
So when a hitherto unforeseen opportunity arose for the recall of the Bourbons, there was no reason why everybody should not be pleased to see them again. They were in no sense imposed on France by a Foreign Power, consequently there was nothing in their return which could possibly wound the national pride. It was later that this astonishing legend became current, and the opposition found in it a formidable weapon. But revolutionary opposition is not as a rule very scrupulous in its choice of arguments, and this particular one ​never had any historical value, being in flat contradiction to historic truth. As a matter of fact, the candidate who was about to become Louis XVIII. had long ago lost any illusions he may have had as to what his house might expect from Foreign Powers. In the course of his long exile, even among those to whom he was allied by ties of blood, he had not invariably found the ordinary consideration due to his rank and his misfortunes ; with the exception of the Prince Regent of England, no one had taken any real interest in him, and England could do no more for him than give utterance to a passion necessarily somewhat platonic. As for the Allies, they had never dreamed of imposing on France any form of government whatever ; their one idea was to overthrow Napoleon. Thus when after the capitulation the Emperor Alexander of Russia made known to Caulaincourt, the French Minister of Foreign Aflfairs, his resolution to make no terms with Napoleon, he was careful to add that France would be at perfect liberty to dispose of herself as she best pleased. He avoided the most distant allusion to the restoration of the Bourbons, for whom, by the way, he had very little personal affection. Now at the ​date of this decision, eighteen days had already passed since the Bourbons had been proclaimed at Bordeaux, where on the 12th of May, 1814, the Mayor had hoisted the white standard ; and Louis XVIII.'s nephew, the Duc d'Angoulême, who was at the moment in Spain, betook himself to Bordeaux with all possible speed. On other points of territory the same proclamation was about to be made.
It was Talleyrand who moved the Emperor of Russia to favour this idea of restoring the old dynasty to the Throne of France. Talleyrand's great skill consisted in the invariably apt divination of coming events. It was said of him that what Talleyrand thought to-day, everybody would be thinking to-morrow, and nothing could be more true. He comprehended that the French would hail Louis XVIII., because this Prince was the very incarnation of the peace and stability they so greatly needed. In fact, they hailed him without the least suspicion that Foreign Powers had any hands in their determination ; consequently without any injury to their self-love.
As it happened, the foreigners who assisted at this restoration bore not the slightest ​resemblance to those who were to be seen the following year brutal in their irritation. They seemed to be agreeably surprised at finding themselves in Paris, and their attitude towards the things they saw there was one almost of respect. The conditions they imposed were very mild and reasonable. The Prussians, it is true, much wished them harder, for their hearts were still stirred with righteous indignation for the manner in which Napoleon had treated them after Iena. But this time they could not very easily give effect to their resentment. France was not Napoleon. It was against the leader not the nation that they bore a grudge. The peace of the 30th of May, 1814, then left to France the frontiers that were hers in 1792, advantageously rectified in several points. Saarbruck, Landau, Mulhouse, Montbéliard, Annecy, Chambéry, and a part of Savoy remained to her ; her colonies, with the exception of the Île de France and St. Domingo, were given back to her ; she suffered no shameful humiliation. On the other hand, the King (who had meanwhile landed at Calais on the 24th of April, and was slowly making his way towards Paris), in his famous declaration of Saint-Ouen, published ​on the eve of his entry into the capital, had laid the foundations of a wise liberty. The majority of the French people might well be satisfied, and in fact they were.
But at the very moment when the King and his ministers were setting so loyally to work ; while Baron Louis was assuring a long future for the financial credit of France by founding his first budget on the Monarchy's pledge to accept all debts contracted by previous regimes ; while Talleyrand at Vienna was accomplishing his diplomatic tour de force, breaking the harmony established among the four allied powers (England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia), squeezing himself in edgeways, and settling down genially in their midst, playing them off one against the other by raising now the question of Saxony, now that of Poland ; finally, on the 3rd of January, 1815, contriving to sign a secret treaty, offensive and defensive, between England, France, and Austria : while all these things were happening it was evident in Paris that henceforth there would exist three distinct French nations, amongst which a difficult equilibrium would have to be established and maintained. The first was the France of the ​Jacobins, the second the France of the Emigrés, the third the France of everybody else.
Now no Restoration of any dynasty or régime was ever before confronted with such a situation. The English Restoration was altogether a different affair. Oliver Cromwell was a usurper. Certainly he embodied political ideas very different from those among which the Stuarts moved ; but between his government and that of Charles I. there was no impassable gulf such as was fixed between Louis XVI.'s government and that of Napoleon I. I grant that at the beginning of his reign Napoleon considered himself Louis XVI.'s heir, but later, as his ambition grew more vast, he traced his descent back as far as Charlemagne, not to say Cæsar. As a matter of fact, he never was the heir and successor of Louis XVI., that is to say, a real King of France. He had his origin and his raison d'être in the Revolution, and the Revolution alone ; he drew his profit from it ; he utilised its crimes in order to confiscate its rights ; he took possession of it to serve his own personal ends. The Jacobins were his most valuable servants, and the spirit of Jacobinism his weightiest lever.
A great deal has been written about ​Jacobinism, but historians agree in recognising in it a deadly political poison, and there is none from which France has suffered more. It is not however a poison indigenous to the country ; we find no traces of it before the writers of the eighteenth century corrupted the mind of France with their many utopias ; but from that date it developed rapidly. There is reason however to believe that but for Napoleon it would have eliminated itself of its own accord. The Revolution and its horrors had pretty well used up the Jacobins ; the Empire saved them. It accepted their theories, and even condescended to apply them, with the help of the sword and the tambour. Thus was Jacobinism perpetuated, crystallised under the name of Bonapartism.
It was opposed in 1814 by the old party of reaction, also crystallised, not by the Napoleonic chemistry but by the atrophy of emigration. Only realise the state of mind of these guileless émigrés : many of them were men who in their exile had led a life of privation, and were absolutely sincere in their devotion to the Monarchy. They never doubted that from the day when this Monarchy was restored they too would be reinstated in all ​their ancient privileges. Possibly many of them would have been quite ready to give them up immediately afterwards, to renounce them a second time as on the memorable 4th of August. But the restitution of these privileges seemed to them an act of strict justice, of mere equity which it was manifestly impossible that the King should refuse them. No wonder if the first acts of the royal Government overwhelmed these poor souls with amazement and dismay.
The two French nations, who after a separation of five-and-twenty years still entertained a lively hatred for each other, could not conceive that any one could dream of trying to conciliate their interests in the face of their respective pasts. Between them, however, there stood a third France, by far the largest of the three, for whose repose that conciliation was imperatively called for. This France was destined to be misunderstood during the greater part of the century, to see her dearest wishes set at naught. The Hundred Days, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were to be brought about without her consent, even against her will. It was she who later on was to throw herself into the arms of Louis Napoleon, later ​yet, to uphold the Third Republic through fear of some other Revolution and desire of political and social stability. She is naturally somewhat apathetic, and suffers herself to be circumvented rather too easily ; but after all, she is the true France, and it is impossible to understand her history if we do not see in her the victim of those others, reactionaries and Jacobins, who for eighty years have outraged her turn by turn.
Louis XVIII., with his large political sense, at once saw in this France, which was neither reactionary nor Jacobin, the indispensable support of his own throne and that of his successors. But he was aware that time alone would enable him to secure that support, for already, under the very shadow of his throne, a pitched battle was being fought between the reactionaries, known as ultra-Royalists or "ultras" for short, and the Jacobins, who adorned themselves with the inappropriate title of " Liberals." This battle, as it happened, was quite inevitable, and its importance has been very much exaggerated. Whether Beugnot, the Prefect of Police, may have ordered the people of Paris to decorate their houses in honour of the procession of the Fête ​Dieu ; or whether at some banquet given by the city, the Prefect of the Seine and the Municipal Council may have been caught waiting on the Royal Family in person ; or Marshal Soult, the Minister of War, may have seen fit to add a chaplain to his suite, there was nothing in it beyond these " écarts d'un zèle trop ardent " of which the King had to complain publicly a little later. To tell the truth, the Jacobins had much more serious grievances to exploit ; among others, the growing discontent of the Army. Not only had it been necessary to disband a part of it, but the mistake had been made of establishing a Maison Militaire du Roi, much too numerous and much too expensive, to say nothing of many injustices besides. Then there were the highly unpopular taxes of the Empire ; their abrogation had been promised, but it had been found necessary to retain them from the moment when the Government assumed entire financial responsibility for the past.
When we consider, on the one hand, the facility with which the Monarchy crumbled away in 1814, and, on the other, the manner in which its re-establishment was received in 1815, we are tempted to give too much ​importance to these causes of unpopularity. We have to look at the fall of the first Restoration in order to judge properly of its popularity. The landing ofNapoleon at Cannes was hardly known when a perfect explosion of Royalism broke out. All State functionaries, the National Guard, the young men of the University were united in a unanimous determination to defend the Throne. Unfortunately these good intentions were paralysed by the defection of the regiments. It could still be hoped that the officers would make a stand against the Emperor; it was by no means possible that the soldiers could be brought to fire on him. He knew it, and exposed himself with magnificent audacity to their bayonets, making straight for them and kindling them to enthusiasm by his look and voice.
However, this temper of the troops was not the gravest factor in the problem. Moreover, those which were not actually present at the passage of the Emperor might possibly have resisted the contagion ; and in certain regiments, notably the 10th of the Line, Royalism was fervent. The disaffection of the troops was seconded, where it was not directly ​provoked, by a civil element which deserves our attention. Men met with the fixed intention of noisily proclaiming their adherence, and exciting others to support the Empire, paralysing by their interference the citizens' goodwill. It was soon seen what manner of men they were; on every hand excesses were committed by them, pillage and revolt and arson, which recalled the worst days of the Revolution; the country felt itself about to fall again under the horrible yoke of the Septembriseurs. The Prefects were uneasy. The Prefect of the Côtes du Nord wrote: "If we do not take care, we shall see again the bloody days of '93." The same opinion was held by the sub-Prefect of Lunéville and others, and M. de Salvandy declared, in a Memoir addressed to the Emperor: "At any moment we may see a return of '93." This was the virus of the Terror. It is not with impunity that a nation learns such a lesson of blood and crime as that of '93. The virus must work in her for long after, ready to burst out at any time of disturbance.
But all the same, a great change had passed over France; and Napoleon, stupefied with astonishment, complained that he could "no ​longer recognise her." Liberal ideas confronted him on every hand. The generals themselves called for a Constitution. Magistrates, professors, and the inferior Government officials remained stolidly hostile to him; they were subdued by fear, but no sincere adherence could be expected from them. Many of the Prefects and sub-Prefects owed their nomination to the Emperor, Louis XVIII. on his accession having kept on about half the functionaries of the Empire; but even they were hostile. Everywhere the mayors showed their lukewarmness and their ill-will. The greater number of them, except in the departments of the East, were "anciens seigneurs" nominated between 1809 and 1816 by Napoleon, who was tormented with a secret desire to rally round him the old noblesse. This time, believing that he could safely trust to the result of the elections, he decided that the Communes with a population of less than 5,000 should themselves nominate their mayors. Two-thirds of those elected were hostile to him. "During the month of April," we read in an official document, "a million tricolours were pulled down in the north, west, and south." So much for the legendary enthusiasm ​with which the French nation has so long been supposed to have welcomed the return from Elba! It is remarkable that these demonstrations of public feeling date from the first few weeks, when the country still flattered itself that a war could be escaped, when the people of the villages and the small towns, easily enough deceived by the optimism affected by the Government, were still capable of illusion on this point, and when not a single foreign bayonet had as yet been seen upon the frontiers.
On his arrival at Lyons, on the 24th of March, Napoleon published the famous series of nine decrees by which he annulled all that the Restoration had done, even nominations to the Legion of Honour and acts of simple justice. But he had hardly set foot in the Tuileries before that foot found itself thrust into the King's shoes. In fact, he had no other alternative than either to rouse those dangerous revolutionary passions which were still rumbling underground, or to pass under the Caudine Forks of Liberalism. To this latter fate he resigned himself.
The Acte Additionnel drawn up by Benjamin Constant was a mere counterfeit of the Charter, ​which pleased neither the Emperor, on whom it was imposed, nor the nation, which felt with what an ill-grace he had lent himself to it. Submitted to a plébiscite, the Acte Additionnel gained an infinitesimal number of votes, while the number of those who refused to vote was colossal. Public opinion obliged the Emperor to convoke the electors without delay ; in all France there were hardly found 7,000 voters for the election of the new Chamber, in some departments from fifteen to twenty citizens only gave in their votes. The electoral organisation of 1802 had been revived; that is to say, deputies in each department were nominated by from two to three hundred electors chosen from among the six hundred citizens who paid the most taxes ; added to these were the dignitaries of the Legion of Honour and two hundred electors designated by the Government. In spite of these precautions and the number of refusals, the Chamber counted only eighty Bonapartists and thirty or forty Jacobin to five hundred Constitutionalists of various shades of Liberalism.
Such was the internal policy. External policy there was none. All the representatives of the Powers had left Paris, those of ​Louis XVIII. had ceased to exercise their functions. Abroad Napoleon was surrounded by an absolute quarantine. The King found himself at Gand in the midst of Ambassadors and Ministers, the Council and the Maison Militaire. Talleyrand continued to sit at the Congress of Vienna as the representative of his sovereign. Everything contributed to show that in the eyes of all Napoleon was no better than an adventurer ; unrecognised abroad, at home tolerated rather than accepted, his situation was such that not even a brilliant victory would have had power to improve it.
As it happened, the great catastrophe everybody was looking for came ; and without hesitation the Chamber declared itself permanent, refused to proclaim Napoleon II., while it exacted from the Emperor his abdication pure and simple. He was as good as annihilated ; for Waterloo had been his last card. He gave himself up for lost, and round him defection was general. Louis XVIII. succeeded in restoring himself. With the Ministers and functionaries who had surrounded him during this brief interregnum, he again took possession of France, but this time he met with a very different reception from that of 1814. ​The French owed their King a grudge for the undignified facility with which he had fallen. They did not reflect that another man would have fallen with still greater facility and rather less dignity.
Very noteworthy are the abrupt changes of opinion which characterise this memorable epoch. France had come to the unanimous conclusion that the Imperial régime was a brilliant and glorious makeshift, but that it had failed to provide a solution of the problem. The Hundred Days were not calculated to modify this impression. Unfortunately they destroyed the certainty which it had been possible to feel a year earlier. In 1814 Louis XVIII. seemed to be the unique heaven-sent sovereign, wrapped in the mysterious power of his principle, the tutelary protector of his country and its liberty. From the moment of his return nobody dreamed that his throne could possibly be overturned. Many documents of the period give this impression of finality ; it was felt not only by the people, always prone to a beautiful simple faith in things, but by the classes educated into scepticism. Memories of the Revolution increased the strength and solidity of the House ​of Bourbon. To overturn it had required a terrific cataclysm, an epic crime ; and that crime had scooped out an abyss in which the entire nation had nearly perished. Was it likely that a race so strong, and with so great a past behind it, could possibly be tumbled over in a mere riot, like some dynasty of a day ? Such a catastrophe as that would have required the resurrection of the Convention and the scaffold, an hypothesis which no sane person could for a moment entertain.
In 1815 everything was changed. That child-like faith in the stability of the Monarchy had been considerably shaken, for the Monarchy had visibly melted away before a mere military pronunciamiento, although it was supported by the majority of the nation. What earthly security did it then offer ? The Royal Family had lost its prestige, and it was not so popular in the country that it could afford to lose it. The French people were as yet unaware of the political genius and persevering will that were latent in Louis XVIII. ; it but dimly suspected the great qualities of his nephew, the Duc d'Angoulême. Owing to his having played no leading part in history, this modest prince has still to wait for history's ​just reversal of its verdict. At Bordeaux, at the beginning of the Hundred Days, Louis XVI.'s daughter, the Duchesse d'Angoulême, displayed an energy which caused Napoleon to say of her, " Madame d'Angoulême is the only man in the family " ; but her ordinary mood was melancholy and supercilious ; the Duc de Berri was considered violent and somewhat limited ; the Comte d'Artois frivolous and narrow in his ideas ; the old Duc de Bourbon, a nonentity. But the Duc d'Orléans was already beginning to command the attention of a few.
On the other hand, the fact remained that Napoleon had granted a Constitutional Charter of his own, against his will to be sure, and without any very sincere intention of remaining faithful to it. Nevertheless, it was enough to prove that liberty and legitimacy were not, as was hitherto supposed, inseparable terms. ​In 1814 they went side by side, each acting in some sort as a check upon the other. But in 1815 the necessity of their union was less apparent. In short, Louis XVIII., though always respected as the original author of the Charter, was no longer the King, but a King, which for the future constituted a radical difference. The Restoration was found to be falsified in its principle of inviolable heredity. Between it and the ancient Monarchy there stood henceforth something more than the great drama of the Revolution and the Empire — there was the brief episode of the Hundred Days. It had suftered more in three months than in five-and-twenty years.
Moreover, difficulties had increased a hundredfold. First there was the presence of the foreign armies ; in Paris alone their maintenance cost 600,000 francs a day, and three-fourths of France was occupied The Russians abandoned themselves to pillage. The Prussians passed their recjuisitions without mercy — and no wonder, when we know in what state of mind they began the campaign. M. Henri Houssaye has given us some typical ​extracts from articles published in the German papers :
This was not the mere passing exaltation of a press excited by the prospect of war ; it was the sentiment of the majority of Germans, and signs of a similar though less violent feeling were to be found amongst other nations. This Gallophobia was the natural result of Napoleon's monstrous scheme for subjugating Europe and the entire world ; it has been kept Up till the present day by the shocks and ​perpetual changes entailed by our policy, and by the fear of the disturbance and complications it may cause to other nations. Few Frenchmen realise how far, even so late as the middle of the century, the "French system" seemed incompatible with the general peace. The Germans of 1815, who had suflfered from it more than any other nation, were anxious to disintegrate France altogether ; their very least ambition was that she would give back the conquests of Louis XIV.
It was here that Wellington's energy interposed. This great Englishman realised that it was of the utmost importance to his country that the integrity of France should be respected ; realised, too, that this integrity was necessary to the peace of Europe. The Emperor Alexander also intervened. He took much more interest in the Monarchy now that he foresaw that his favourite Richelieu was about to become its Prime Minister. And when this prospect was realised, he made a ​further reduction of from eight hundred to seven hundred millions in the war indemnity, and induced the Allies to give up Condé, Charlemont, Givet, and the forts of Écluse and Joux, positions which would have given the enemy command of the French valleys. Finally, the 150,000 men who composed the corps of occupation were to remain in France five years instead of seven.
This second Treaty of Paris was received in Germany with transports of indignation ; but for all its apparent lenity it seemed hard enough to the French ; the more so, no doubt, as it entailed painfully humiliating conditions, such as the disbanding of the army which had fought at Waterloo, the removal from Paris of the pictures and objets d’art obtained in twenty-five years of foreign conquest, and, last, the drawing up of the famous Holy Alliance. To be sure, France would have been less offended at this Alliance if she had understood its absurd tenor and still more absurd origin. But when we realise the nation's situation at that time, it is difficult to estimate too highly all that she owed to the intervention of Alexander and of Wellington. By a ​singular coincidence, sixty years later (1875), it was England and Russia who for the second time intervened to destroy the malignant designs of Prussia.
Thus, in 1815, the nation was confronted with the same problem as in 1814 — the foundation of a Constitutional Monarchy. But the lamentable episode of the Hundred Days had rendered almost useless the tools it possessed for accomplishing this work. Abroad, the situation was altogether modified, nothing, or almost nothing remained of the conquests of the Revolution. Europe, leagued against France, held her under a humiliating yoke, her governors saw for her no honourable alliance, no means of playing an effective rôle in the concert of the Powers. At home, her loss in material and moral forces was enormous. The mere money loss, perhaps, might have been repaired by good administration and wise economy ; but prestige compromised, confidence shaken, old antagonisms revived — these things could only be wiped away after many years, if ever.
Louis XVIII. and his ministers set themselves courageously to the interrupted work, bringing to it a most laudable spirit of ​moderation. The number of their proscriptions amounted but to ninety-two, of which nineteen were military. They recalled the Chamber of the Peers, and among the new titles added to those of 1814 was that of Lanjuinais, President of the Chamber during the Hundred Days. Baron Louis carried his budget through as before, without repudiating any of the heavy debts contracted through recent events. Unfortunately these examples, in spite of their exalted source, were by no means generally followed. The disturbances in the provinces which arose from the return of Napoleon had never ceased; nearly 17,000 soldiers had been employed during the Hundred Days in a repression which was apparently inadequate. The disturbances continued, sometimes assuming the character of reprisals between rival factions. This excitement, added to that caused by the pressure of the foreign armies, was not exactly conducive to a prudent policy of juste milieu. Extreme Royalists had no difficulty, as it happened, in incriminating a policy which in the eyes of the less enlightened portion of the nation might be held responsible — however little it was so in reality — for the misfortunes of the ​preceding year. Electors, borne along on a path of which they were soon to recognise the danger, sent to the Paris Chamber a majority who, under the pretence of fortifying the Monarchy, were about to call for the most compromising and high-flown solutions of pressing questions. The greater part were rural proprietors, old émigrés, men unused to politics, inexperienced and sometimes ignorant, who belonged to the lower ranks of the nobility and were jealous of the higher — jealous, too, to secure for themselves a preponderance of power, even if the principle of Royalty was to suffer.
For it has been pleasantly said of this Chamber, called the " Introuvable" because of its exaggerations, that it was " plus royaliste que le Roi." It would be more correct to say that it was revolutionary in its own way ; continually claiming new rights, extending its influence as far as possible, and trying to inspire the Government with its own passions. Its temper was sufficiently manifested in the early days when a deputy, M. de La Bourdonnais, was heard frantically demanding ​" des fers, des bourreaux, des supplices," for his adversaries. It was more clearly defined during the trial of Marechal Ney, when deputies actually posted a volunteer faction at the door of the chamber where he was detained, to make sure that the Marechal should not escape. Richelieu had agreed with the King that after his condemnation Ney's pardon should be asked by the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Ladies of high rank visited this princess and implored her not to interfere. Such furious excitement had never before been seen in civilised society. So when it was known that La Valette, arrested about the same time as the Marechal, had made off, the fury of the ultras knew no bounds.
It turned against the regicides. Terrific measures were suggested against them ; measures which the Cabinet did its best to reject. But banishment was proposed as the very least that could be done. The Chancellor, Pasquier, knowing that this was contrary to the King's intentions, asked Louis XVIII. for his opinion. " Richelieu," says he in his Mémoires, "gave me to understand that the King was immovable in his resolution to fulfil without exception the promises made in the ​Charter." Notwithstanding, banishment was unanimously voted for with but three dissenting voices, and the Ministers considered themselves obliged to support this manifestation of the will of the Chamber. They had forced the King's hand.
The religious question was no less a cause of trouble. The King was besieged with petitions for the abrogation of Article V. of the Charter, promising liberty to every form of worship. Restitution of the property of the clergy confiscated during the Revolution was also demanded, and on this he put his veto. Private committees were formed for the purpose of laying information. They required the reform of the army, the administration, the prefecture system; professors, magistrates, academicians, soon became the objects of denunciations, and the Ministry more than once was weak enough to yield, and punished functionaries whose chief fault was that they did not share the passions of the ultras. The King exercised his prerogative of pardon in favour of several of the military, but the famous conspiracy of Didier, at Grenoble, exaggerated as it was by General Donnadieu, who wished to take credit for putting it down, ​brought about a new series of trials and executions.
All this violence was only the reflux of the great wave of excitement caused by the return of Napoleon. Curiously enough, more than one old servant of the Empire, supposing him to be submerged for ever, appeared to swell the number of the ultras by mere force of habit and affection for extreme ideas and arbitrary solutions. This state of things lasted till the day when Louis XVIII. very courageously decided to dissolve the " Introuvable " Chamber, and appeal to the country. As may be imagined, the ultras was scandalised, but the country was infinitely obliged to the King for his initiative. The Constitutional Monarchy had wakened to its normal life ; beneficent tolerance stooped from the throne. Louis XVIII. showed then that he did not propose to be the King of the Royalists alone, but the King of the French people.
* ↑ A carelessness by no means uncommon has given rise to the story that Napoleon's words, uttered in 1815, referred to the Duchesse de Berri. Now in 1815 the Duchesse de Berri was not married. Besides, she gave no special signs of virility beyond the insurrection which she stirred up in Vendée in 1832, at which date Napoleon had been dead eleven years.
* ↑ The sum total spent on the occupation was 2,416,000,000 francs (₤96,640,000).
* ↑ Allgemeine Zeltung, May 19th and 25th ; the Nüremberg Correspondent, April 1st ; Augsburg Gazette, March 25th and April 12th ; Frankfort Journal, May 3rd.
* ↑ The Duc de Richelieu, who emigrated to Russia, entered the service of the Emperor, founded Odessa, and rendered in South Russia services which made him highly popular.
* ↑ Their number was found to be double that of the voters during the elections of the Hundred Days.