Volume 5 — BOOK XV[263] (continued 2)

"I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it. Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to reconcile order with liberty.

"Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time, they are on the road to exile.

"Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom you have ruined! Instigators of coups d'État, preachers of constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.

"In thus frankly expressing my sentiments in this tribune, I have no idea that I am performing an act of heroism. Those times are past when opinions were expressed at personal hazard: if such were now the case, I should speak a hundred times louder. The best buckler is a breast that does not fear to show itself uncovered to the enemy. No, gentlemen, we need neither fear a people whose reason is equal to its courage, nor that generous rising generation which I admire, with which I sympathize with all the faculties of my soul, and to which, as to my country, I wish honour, glory and liberty.

"Far from me, above all things, be the thought of sowing seeds of discord in France, and that has been my motive for excluding from my speech every accent of passion. If I could convince myself that a child should be left in the happy ranks of obscurity in order to procure the peace of thirty-three millions of men, I should have regarded every word as criminal which was not consistent with the needs of the time: but I am not so convinced. Had I the disposal of a crown, I would willingly lay it at the feet of M. le Duc d'Orléans. But all that I see vacant is, not a throne, but a tomb at Saint-Denis.

"Whatever destiny may await M. the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he promotes my country's welfare. I only ask to retain my liberty of conscience and the right of going to die where I shall find independence and repose.

"I vote against the declaration."

*

I was fairly calm when I began my speech, but gradually I was overcome with emotion. When I came to this passage: "Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country with my disregarded warnings," my voice became troubled, and I was obliged to put my handkerchief to my eyes to keep back tears of love and bitterness. Indignation restored my power of speech in the paragraph that follows:

"Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded, you with his gifts and whom you have ruined!"

Its effect on the Peers.

I turned my glances upon the benches to which I addressed those words. Several peers seemed crushed; they sank down in their arm-chairs till I could no longer see them behind their colleagues seated motionless before them. This speech made some noise: all parties were hurt in it, but all remained silent, because, by the side of great truths, I had placed a great sacrifice. I came down from the tribune; I left the Chamber, went to the cloak-room, took off my peer's coat, my sword, my feathered hat; I unfastened from the last the white cockade and placed it in the little pocket on the left-hand side of the black frock-coat which I put on and buttoned across my heart. My servant carried away the cast-off clothes of the peerage, and I, shaking the dust from my feet, quitted that palace of treachery, which I shall never enter again in my life.

On the 10th and 12th of August, I completed my self-divestment and sent in the different resignations that follow:

"Paris, 10 August 1830.

"Monsieur le président de la Chambre des pairs[319],

"Being unable to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe d'Orléans as King of the French, I find myself seized with a legal incapacity which prevents me from attending the sittings of the Hereditary Chamber. One mark of the kindness of King Louis XVIII. and of the royal munificence remains to me: a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs, which was given me to keep up, if not brilliantly, at least independently of immediate needs, the high position to which I was called. It would not be right that I should retain a favour attached to the exercise of functions which I am not able to fulfil. I therefore have the honour to resign into your hands my pension as a peer."

"Paris, 12 August 1830.

"Monsieur le ministre des finances[320],

"There remains to me, from the kindness of Louis XVII I. and the national munificence, a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs, transformed into an annuity inscribed on the ledger of the public debt and transmissible only to the first direct generation of the annuitant. Not being able to take the oath to Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans as King of the French, it would not be right that I should continue to receive a pension attached to functions which I no longer exercise.

"I therefore write to resign it into your hands: it will have ceased to accrue to me on the day (10 August) when I wrote to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers that it would be impossible for me to take the oath required.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

I resign pension and place.

"Paris, 12 August 1830.

"Monsieur le grand référendaire[321],

"I have the honour to send you a copy of the two letters which I have addressed, one to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers, the other to M. the Minister of Finance. You will there see that I renounce my peer's pension and that consequently my attorney will have to receive of this pension only the sum due to the 10th of August, the day on which I declared my refusal to take the oath.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

"Paris, 12 August 1830.

"Monsieur le ministre de la justice[322],

"I have the honour to send you my resignation as Minister of State.

"I am, with high regard,

"Monsieur le ministre de la justice,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant."

*

I remained as naked as a little St. John; but I had long been accustomed to live on wild honey, and I did not fear that the daughter of Herodias would have a longing for my grey head.

My gold-lace, tassels, bullioned fringe and epaulettes, sold to a Jew and melted down by him, brought me in seven hundred francs, the net produce of all my grandeurs.

And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road. In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country, the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V. and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and people stood at their windows to see it pass.

Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter "on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the monarchy."

The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:

"In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him tribute, etc."

It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes. Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States, is already no more than an exile in his capital.

This indifference of the country for Charles X. points to something more than lassitude: we are bound to behold in it the progress of democratic ideas and the assimilation of ranks. At an earlier period, the fall of a king of France would have been an enormous event: time has lowered the monarch from the height on which he was placed, has brought him nearer to us, has diminished the space which separated him from the class of the people. If men felt little surprise at meeting the son of St. Louis on the high-road like everybody else, this was due not to a spirit of hatred or system, but quite simply to the sense of social levelling which has penetrated men's minds and which has acted upon the masses without their knowing it.

Charles X. at Cherbourg.

A curse, Cherbourg, upon thy ill-omened precincts! It was near Cherbourg that the wind of anger threw Edward III. to ravage our country[323]; it was not far from Cherbourg that the wind of an enemy's victory shattered Tourville's fleet[324]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind of a deceptive prosperity drove Louis XVI. toward his scaffold[325]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind from I know not what shore carried away our last Princes. The coast of Great Britain, on which William the Conqueror[326] landed, witnessed the disembarkation of Charles the Tenth without lance or pennon: he went to Holyrood to find the memories of his youth[327] hung upon the walls of the Stuart palace like old engravings made yellow by time.

*

I have depicted the Three Days as they unrolled themselves before my eyes: hence a certain contemporary colour, true at the passing moment, false after the moment has passed, is diffused over my picture. There is no revolution so prodigious but, described from minute to minute, will find itself reduced to the slightest proportions. Events issue from the womb of things, even as men from the womb of their mothers, accompanied by the infirmities of nature. Misery and greatness are twin sisters: they are born together; but where the confinement is a vigorous one, misery at a certain period dies, and greatness alone survives. To judge impartially of the truth that is to remain, we must therefore place ourselves at the point of view from which posterity will contemplate the accomplished fact.

Getting away from the meannesses of character and action of which I had been a witness, taking only what will remain of the Days of July, I said with justice in my speech in the Chamber of Peers:

"The people having armed themselves with their courage and their intelligence, it was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe freely amidst the smoke of gunpowder, and that it required rather more than 'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three last suns that have shone over France."

In fact, the people properly so-called were brave and generous on the day of the 28th. The Guards had lost more than 300 men killed and wounded; they did ample justice to the poor classes, who alone fought on that day and among whom were mingled men who were foul-minded, but who were unable to dishonour them. The pupils of the Polytechnic School, who left their school too late on the 28th to take part in the fighting, were placed by the people at their head on the 29th with admirable simplicity and ingenuousness.

Champions who had been absent from the strife sustained by the people came to join their ranks on the 29th, when the greatest danger was past; others, likewise victors, first joined the conquering side on the 30th and 31st.

On the side of the troops, things were very much the same; only the soldiers and officers were engaged: the staff, which had once deserted Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, kept to the heights of Saint-Cloud, watching from which side the wind blew the smoke of the powder. They pressed on each other's heels at Charles X.'s levee; not a soul was present at his couchee.

The moderation of the plebeian classes equalled their courage; order resulted suddenly from confusion. One must have seen the half-naked workmen, posted on sentry at the gate of the public gardens, preventing other ragged workmen from passing, to form an idea of the power of duty which had seized upon the men who remained the masters. They could have paid themselves the price of their blood and allowed themselves to be tempted by their wretchedness. One did not, as on the 10th of August 1792, see the Swiss massacred in their flight. All opinions were respected; never, with a few exceptions, was victory less abused. The victors carried the wounded Guards through the crowd, crying:

"Respect brave men!"

If a soldier came to die, they said:

"Peace to the dead!"

The fifteen years of the Restoration, under a constitutional government, had given rise among us to that spirit of humanity, lawfulness and justice which twenty-five years of the revolutionary and warlike spirit had been unable to produce. The law of force introduced into our manners seemed to have become the common law.

The consequences of the Revolution of July will be memorable. This Revolution has pronounced a decree against all thrones: to-day, kings will be able to reign only by force of arms; a sure means for a moment, but incapable of enduring: the time of successive janissaries is ended.

Thoughts on the Three Days.

Neither Tacitus nor Thucydides could give us a good description of the events of the Three Days; it would need Bossuet to explain to us the events in the order of Providence: a genius that saw all, but without overstepping the limits set to its reason and its splendour, like the sun which moves between two dazzling boundaries and which the Orientals call the "Slave of God."

Let us not seek so near at hand the motive powers of a movement placed so far away; the mediocrity of mankind, mad terrors, inexplicable disagreements, hatreds, ambitions, the presumption of some, the prejudice of others, secret conspiracies, buying and selling, well or ill-advised measures, courage or the absence of courage: all these things are the accidents, not the causes, of the event. When people say that they no longer wanted the Bourbons, that these had become hateful because they were supposed to have been forced upon France by the foreigner, this lofty disgust explains nothing satisfactorily.

The movement of July has not to do with politics properly so-called: it has to do with the social revolution which is never idle. By the concatenation of this general revolution, the 28th of July 1830 is only the inevitable sequel of the 21st of January 1793. The work of our first deliberative assemblies had been suspended; it had not been finished. In the course of twenty years, the French had accustomed themselves, like the English under Cromwell, to be governed by other masters than their old sovereigns. The fall of Charles X. is the consequence of the decapitation of Louis XVI., even as the dethronement of James II. is the consequence of the murder of Charles I. The Revolution seemed to die away in the glory of Bonaparte and in the liberties of Louis XVIII., but its germ was not destroyed: lodged at the bottom of our manners, it developed when the faults of the Restoration gave it fresh heat, and soon it burst forth.

The counsels of Providence are revealed in the anti-monarchical changes that are taking place. That superficial minds should see merely a scuffle in the Revolution of the Three Days is quite simple; but reflective men know that an enormous step forward has been taken: the principle of the sovereignty of the people has been substituted for the principle of the royal sovereignty, the hereditary monarchy changed into an elective monarchy. The 21st of January taught that one could dispose of a king's head; the 29th of July has shown that one can dispose of a crown. Now, any truth, good or bad, which manifests itself, remains the acquisition of the crowd. A change ceases to be unheard of, or extraordinary; it no longer presents itself to the mind or the conscience as impious, when it results from an idea that has become popular. The Franks used to exercise the sovereignty collectively; next they delegated it to a few chiefs; then those chiefs confided it to one alone; then this sole chief usurped it for the benefit of his family. Now men are going back from the hereditary royalty to the elective royalty, and from the elective royalty they will glide into the republic. That is the history of society; these are the stages by which the government comes from the people and returns to it.

Let us, then, not believe that the work of July is a superfetation of a day; let us not imagine that Legitimacy is going to come incontinently to re-establish succession by right of primogeniture: let us neither try to persuade ourselves that July will suddenly die a natural death. No doubt, the Orleans Branch will not take root: it is not to produce that result that so much blood, calamity and genius has been expended during the last half-century! But July, if it do not bring about the final destruction of France with the ruin of all her liberties, will bear its natural fruit: that fruit is democracy. The fruit will perhaps be bitter and blood-red; but the Monarchy is an outlandish graft, which will not take on a republican stem.

And so let us not confound the improvised King with the Revolution from which he sprang by chance: the latter, such as we see it, is acting in contradiction with its principles; it seems to have been born without the power to live, because it is punished with a throne: but let it only drag on a few years, this Revolution, and what will have come and gone will change the data that remain to be known. Grown-up men die, or no longer see things as they used to see them; adolescents attain the age of reason; new generations recruit corrupt generations; the linen soaked in the sores of a hospital, when met by a great stream, soils only the water that flows below those corruptions: down stream and up stream, the current keeps or resumes its limpidity.

The monarchy of July.

July, free in its origin, produced only a fettered monarchy; but the time will come when, rid of its crown, it will undergo the transformations which are the law of existences; then it will live in an atmosphere befitting its nature.

The errors of the Republican Party, the illusions of the Legitimist Party are both deplorable and go beyond democracy and royalty: the first thinks that violence is the only means of success; the second thinks that the past is the only harbour of safety. Now, there is a moral law which rules society, a general legitimacy which dominates the particular legitimacy. This great law and this great legitimacy are the enjoyment of the natural rights of man, ruled by his duties; for it is the duty that creates the right, and not the right that creates the duty; the passions and the vices relegate us to the class of slaves. The general legitimacy would have had no obstacle to overcome, if it had kept, as belonging to the same principle, the particular legitimacy.

For the rest, one observation will suffice to make us understand the prodigious and majestic might of the family of our old sovereigns; I have already said it and can not repeat it too often: all the royalties will die with the French Royalty.

In fact, the monarchical idea is wanting at the very moment when the monarch is wanting; we find nothing left around us but the democratic idea. My young King will carry away in his arms the monarchy of the world. It is a good ending.

*

When I was writing all this on what the Revolution of 1830 might be in the future, I had a difficulty in defending myself against an instinct which spoke to me in contradiction to my argument. I took this instinct for the impulse of my dislike of the troubles of 1830; I distrusted myself and, perhaps, in my too loyal impartiality, I exaggerated the future which the Three Days might bring forth. Well, ten years have passed since the fall of Charles X.: has July sat down? We are now at the commencement of December 1840: to what a depth has France sunk! If I could find any pleasure in the humiliation of a government of French origin, I should experience a sort of pride in re-reading, in the Congrès de Vérone, my correspondence with Mr. Canning: certainly it differs from that which has just been communicated to the Chamber of Deputies. Whose is the fault? Is it that of the elected Prince? Is it that of the incapacity of his ministers? Is it that of the nation itself, whose character and genius seem to be exhausted? Our ideas are progressive; but do our manners support them? It would not be surprising if a people which has existed fourteen centuries and which has ended that long career with an explosion of miracles should have come to an end. If you read these Memoirs to their conclusion, you will see that, while doing justice to all that has seemed fine to me in the various epochs of our history, I am of opinion that, in the last result, the old society is coming to an end[328].

*

Here ends my political career. This career ought also to close my Memoirs, since nothing is left for me but to sum up the experiences of my course. Three catastrophes have marked the three preceding parts of my life: I saw Louis XVI. die during my career as a traveller and a soldier; at the end of my political career, Bonaparte disappeared; Charles X., in falling, closed my political career.

I have fixed the period of a revolution in literature, and, in the same way, in politics, I have formulated the principles of representative government: my diplomatic correspondence is worth quite as much, I think, as my literary compositions. It is possible that both are worth nothing at all, but it is certain that they are of equal value.

In France, in the tribune of the House of Peers and in my writings, I exercised so great an influence that I first placed M. de Villèle in office and that, later, he was forced to retire in the face of my opposition, after he had made himself my enemy. All this is proved by what you have read.

The great event of my political career is the Spanish War. It was for me, in this career, what the Génie du Christianisme had been in my literary career. My destiny picked me out to entrust me with the mighty venture which, under the Restoration, might have set in regular order the world's progress towards the future. It took me out of my dreams, and transformed me into a leader of facts. It set me down to play at a table at which were seated, as my adversaries, the two first ministers of the day, Prince Metternich and Mr. Canning: I won the game against both of them. All the serious minds which the Cabinets at that time numbered agreed that they had met a statesman in me[329]. Bonaparte had foreseen it before them, in spite of my books. I am entitled therefore, without boasting, to believe that the politician in me equalled the writer; but I attach no value to political renown: that is why I have allowed myself to speak of it.

End of my political career.

If, at the time of the Peninsular Enterprise, I had not been flung aside by deluded men, the course of our destinies would have changed: France would have resumed her frontiers, the equilibrium of Europe would have been re-established; the Restoration, becoming glorious, might have lived a long time yet, and my diplomatic work would also have marked a stage in our history. Between my two lives, there is only a difference of result. My literary career, completely accomplished, has produced all that it had to produce, because it depended on myself alone. My political career was suddenly stopped in the midst of its successes, because it depended on others.

Nevertheless, I admit that my politics were applicable only to the Restoration. When a transformation takes place in principles, societies and men, what was good yesterday becomes antiquated and lapsed to-day. With regard to Spain, the relations between the Royal Families having ceased, owing to the abolition of the Salic Law, there is no longer a question of creating impenetrable frontiers beyond the Pyrenees; we must accept the field of battle which Austria and England may one day open up to us there; we must take things at the point to which they have come and abandon, not without regret, a firm but reasonable line of conduct, the certain benefits of which were, it is true, long-dated. I feel conscious of having served the Legitimacy as it should be served. I saw the future as clearly as I see it now; only I wished to reach it by a less dangerous road, so that the Legitimacy, which was essential to our constitutional instruction, might not stumble in a precipitous course. To-day, my plans are no longer realizable: Russia is going to turn elsewhere. If, as things now are, I were to enter the Peninsula, whose spirit has had time to change, it would be with other thoughts: I should occupy myself only with the alliance of the nations, suspicious, jealous, passionate, uncertain and variable though it be, and should not dream of relations between the kings. I should say to France:

"You have left the beaten track for the path of precipices: very well, explore its wonders and its perils. Come to us, innovations, enterprises, discoveries! Come, and let arms, if necessary, favour you! Where is there anything new? In the East? Let us march there! Where can we direct our courage and our intelligence? Let us hasten thither! Let us place ourselves at the head of the great rising of the human race; let us not allow ourselves to be outstripped; let the French name go before the others on this crusade, as of old it did to the Tomb of Christ!"

Yes, if I were admitted to my country's councils, I would try to be of use to it in the dangerous principles which it has adopted: to restrain it at present, would mean to condemn it to a base death. I should not be satisfied with speeches: adding works to faith, I should prepare soldiers and millions, I should build ships, like Noe, to make prevision for the deluge, and, if I were asked why, I should answer:

"Because such is France's good pleasure."

My dispatches would warn the Cabinets of Europe that nothing shall stir on the globe without our intervention; that, if the world's shreds are to be distributed, the lion's share shall fall to us. We should cease humbly to ask our neighbours for leave to exist; the heart of France would beat freely, no hand would dare to lay itself upon that heart to count its throbbings; and, since we are seeking new suns, I should dart towards their splendour and no longer await the natural rise of dawn.

God grant that these industrial interests, in which we are to find a prosperity of a new kind, may deceive nobody, that they may prove as fruitful, as civilizing as the moral interests whence the old society issued! Time will teach us whether they be not the barren dreams of those sterile intellects which lack the faculty of rising above the material world.

With the Legitimacy.

Although my part finishes with the Legitimacy, all my wishes are for France, whatever be the powers which her improvident whim may lead her to obey. As for myself, I ask for nothing more; I would wish only not too long to outlive the ruins which lie crumbling at my feet. But one's years are like the Alps: scarce has one surmounted the first, before others rise before one. Alas, those last and higher mountains are uninhabited, arid and topped with snow!

PART THE FOURTH

1830-1841