The Express.
London, England, 1852-05-14 00:00:00

GENERAL CHANGARNIER AND LOUIS

NAPOLEON.

The following letter, in reply to Louis Napoleon's
decrees on the oath. has been published :
"Matinee, May 10, 18.12, 10 o'clock, A.Y.
"M. le Ministre,—During 36 years I have served France
with a devotion which might be equalled, but which could
not be surpassed.
"Under the Restoration I held a grade in the army
proportional to the then obscurity of the services 1 had
rendered.
" Under the government of July the elvinces of war
raised me rapidly to the station of lieutenant-general.
" Twelve days after the proclamation of the Republic,
when M. the Due d'Aumale, whom I had just re-conducted
on hoard the Solon, honouring him with a salute from the
artillery of the Place do la Marine, as if the King Louis
Philippe still inhabited the Tuileries, had left me the go.
vernment of Algeria ad interim.
" I wrote to the Minister of the Interior that I had not
wished for the proclamation of the Republic, but that it
did not appear to me to change my duties towards my
coun'ry ; the provisional government slid not break my
sword, and on the 16th April it had no cause to regret
being able to make use of it. A short time after that day I
was appointed Governor-General of Africa. I soon left
that high position, where everything was easy for me to
effect, to respond to the confidence of the electors of Paris,
who called me to the Constituent Assembly. General
Caysignac, charged with the executive government, atter
the days of June, 1848, at which time I was absent, named
me on the 30th of June commander-in-chief of the National
Guards of the Seine. On the 14th of December, of the same
year, General Cavaignac having desired me to call at the hotel
he oceupied, Rue de Varennes, told me, in the pretence of nll
the ministers, that the police believed in a Bonapartist
movement, prepared to profit by the ceremony of the
anniversary of the translation of the remains of the
Emperor to the Invaliies, in order to excite the popular
enthusiasm to conduct Napoleon Bonaparte to the Tuile-
ries, and to proclaim him emperor. General Cavaignae
finished by asking my opinion on the measures to be taken.
I gave him it, and finished by saying, ' My dear General,
I have given my hand to Louis Napoleon to make bins a
president—not an emperor. In a few days he will be Pre-
sident of the Republic ; but you may depend upon it that it
is not to-morrow that he will enter the Tuileries, where
you have established my quarters-general.'
These words expressed briefly, but exactly, my unshake•
able determination to remain—what in all my life I have
been—a man of order and of the law.
" Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has several times attempted
to make me deviate from the right line which I had traced
to myself in order to determine me to serve his ambition.
He has often offered me, and made other persons offer me,
not only the dignity of Marshal, which France would have
seen conferred upon me without considering itself fallen,
but another military dignity which, since the fall of the
Empire, has ceased to dominate our hierarchy. He wished
to attach to that dignity enormous pecuniary advantages,
which, thanks to the simplicity of my habits, I had no
merit in disdaining. Having perceived, when very late,
that personal interest had no influence on my conduct, he
endeavoured to gain me over by pretending that he was re-
solved to prepare for the triumph of the cause of the
monarchy, to which he 'unposed that I was devoted by my
predilections. All these kinds of seductions were power-
less. I never ceased to be, when in the command of the
army of Paris and in the Assembly, ready, as I once
stated during a sitting of the committee of permanence,
after the reviews at Satory, to defend with energy the legal
powers of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and to give every
opposition to the illegal prolongation of those powers.
• It is not to you that it is necessary to tell how tbss
powers have been established under a new form, and what
1 iniquitous and violent acts have accompanied his installs.
lion.
I " Persecution has not cooled my patriotism. The exile
',bleb I item undergone in solitude and silence, which now
I pea fors se to break, has not changed in my eyea my
' &Ma le Finage.
el Wan M to be attacked. I would solicit with ardour the
berm et ling in its defence.
" The French journal which I here see has just in-
honed.4.,
me the decree which determines the mode of
Itaking the oath—which is to be demanded from all military
authorities. A paragraph, evidently drawn up in order to
be applied to the proscribed generals, gives them a delay of
four months. I have no need of deliberating so long upon
a question of duty and honour.
" This oath—exacted by the perjured man who lin failed
to corrupt me—this oath I refuse.
(Signed)

'. CUANOARNIEII.