Note 107 — Chapter III · OCCUPATION OF FRENCH FORTRESSES.

Wellington perceived clearly the weakness of the new system; but he blamed the stupidity of the ultra-Royalist party, who, ruling the King, endeavoured to gain a cheap popularity at the expense of the Allies, to whom they owed entirely their restoration to power. “The descendants of Louis XV. will not reign in France; and I must say, and always will say, that it is the fault of Monsieur” (afterwards Charles X.) “and his adherents.... I wish Monsieur would read the histories of our Restoration and subsequent Revolution, or that he would recollect what passed under his own view, probably at his own instigation, in the Revolution. The conduct of the Royalists in joining with the Jacobins against the Moderate party, certainly led to the King’s death. There are persons now at Paris who recollect the triumph of these parties when they obtained the vote for excluding from office, and from the Legislative Assembly, all who had been in the Constituante Assembly; and yet it is certain that that vote, more than any other single measure, was the cause of all the subsequent misfortunes, confiscations, murder of the King, etc.; and they could not avoid comparing that triumph with the senseless one over the Government the other day, upon a vital question in the law for regulating the press” (The Duke of Wellington to the Right Hon. J. C. Villiers, Jan. 11, 1818: Supplementary Despatches, etc. , xii. 213).