Fall of Fouché and Talleyrand. 163 M. Guizot answers the question with perfect freedom and unreserve in the following passage : There has been much discussion as to what plots and conspirators overthrew the Bourbons, and brought back Napoleon, on the 20th of March, 1815,-a question of inferior importance, and interesting only as an historical curiosity. It is certain that from 1814 to 1815 there existed in the army and with the remnants of the Revolution, amongst generals and conventionalists, many plans and secret practices against the Restoration, and in favour of a new Government, either the Empire, a regency, the Duke of Orleans, or a republic. Marshal Davoust promised his support to the Imperial party, and Fouché offered his to all. But if Napoleon had remained motionless at the island of Elba, these revolutionary projects would, in all probability, have successively failed, as did those of the Generals d'Erlon, Lallemand, and Lefèvre Desnouettes, even so late as the month of March. The fatuity of the contrivers of conspiracy is incalculable; and when the event seems to justify them, they attribute to themselves the result which had been achieved by mightier and much more complicated causes than their machinations. It was Napoleon alone who dethroned the Bourbons in 1815, by calling up, in his own person, the fanatical devotion of the army, and the revolutionary instincts of the popular masses. However tottering might be the monarchy lately restored, it required that great man and a combination of these great social powers to subvert it. Stupefied and intimidated, France left events to their course, without opposition or confidence. Napoleon adopted this opinion, with his admirable penetration:- They allowed me to arrive,' he said to Count Mollien,' as they permitted the others to depart.' Fouché did not long remain in the first Ministry of the second Restoration. He had become somewhat disagreeable to the King, with whom he expostulated as to the necessity of conciliating the party of the Revolution and the Empire. He had also become disagreeable to the majority of the Chamber. Talleyrand sounded him as to accepting the embassy to America, but Fouché having bluntly inquired whether the Cabinet wished to get rid of him, Talleyrand was silent. Three months after this period neither Talleyrand nor Fouché were any longer in the Ministry. They had fallen, not under the pressure of any new or unforseen event, but by the evils connected with their personal situation, and their inaptitude for parts they had undertaken to play. An interesting part of the volume before us is the account of the first meeting of the Chamber of Deputies on the second Restoration. M. Guizot describes the Chamber as exclusively Royalist. On the 23rd of October, 1815, in the debate on the Bill presented by M. Decazes for the temporary suspension of personal liberty, M. d'Argenson spoke of the reports which had been spread abroad respecting the massacre of Protestants in the South. A violent tumult arose. 'I bring forward no charges,' said M. d'Argenson. 'I merely say that vague and contradic· tory rumours have reached me. The very vagueness of these rumours calls for a report from the Minister on the state of the 'kingdom.' M. d'Argenson was defeated, interrupted, and called to order for having alluded to facts too certain, but which the Government wished, by silencing all debate, to obliterate from the public mind. Now, for the first time in a quarter of a century, the Royalists saw themselves in the ascendant, and they indulged in the enjoyment of power with a mixture of aristocratic arrogance and new-born zeal. These were the tactics of men little accustomed to victory, and doubtful of the strength they were eager to display. This Chamber has been marked historically with the character of extreme reaction. actionist party had their fighting champion, their political advocate, and their philosopher. M. de Labourdonnaye, says M. Guizot, led their passions, M. de Vilelle their interests, and M. de Bonald their ideas-three men well-suited to their parts, for they excelled respectively-the first, in fiery attack; the second, in prudent and patient manoeuvring; and the third, in specious, subtle, and elevated exposition. The re The head of the Ministry, which, on the 26th of September, 1815, succeeded to the Talleyrand Cabinet, was the Duke de Richelieu. This nobleman, the friend of the Emperor Alexander, and respected by all Europe, had recently arrived in France with a great character for administrative talent acquired in the government of Odessa. The six other Ministers were Decazes, Dusbouchage, Barbé, Marbois de Vaublanc, Corvetto (erroneously called in the translation of the Memoirs Coretto), and the Duke de Feltre, also erroneously called in the translation Duke of Feltri. M. Guizot was intimately acquainted with M. de Marbois, whom he had frequently met at the houses of Madame Rumford and Madame Suard. Madame Rumford, it may be necessary to state, was the widow of Lavoisier, who had married a second time the American, Benjamin Thompson, created by the King of Bavaria Count Rumford. At their house at Auteuil, near Paris, the most distinguished Frenchmen and strangers met in amicable intercourse, and here Guizot was early introduced. Under Marbois, a man of moderate principles, and opposed to every sort of reaction, M. Guizot held, as confidential friend, the post of Secretary-General to the Ministry of Justice, to which M. Pasquier had nominated him under the Cabinet of M. de Talleyrand. Marbois was one of those upright, well-informed Barbé Marbois-Execution of Ney. 165 men, neither quick sighted nor commanding, who assist power by opinion rather than force. He had opposed, according to his young friend, the reaction with integrity, and served the King with dignity, without acquiring personal influence. In October, 1815, Louis XVIII. expressed much anxiety for the introduction of the Bill respecting the Prévôtal Courts. It was settled in Council that the Chancellor and the Minister of War should prepare it together. A few days after the King asked for it rather impatiently. 'Sire,' answered M. de Marbois, 'I am ashamed to tell your Majesty that it is ready.' As a satisfaction to the Côté droit, M. de Marbois was dismissed from the Ministry, and M. Dambray, a Norman gentleman, the cousin of Miromenil, the Chancellor of Louis XVI., assumed the seals. Dambray, who had been Advocate-General at the Cour des Aides before the Revolution, though an amiable man, was rather a bigot. The Protestant opinions and extraction of M. Guizot were unsuitable to him, and the author of these Memoirs immediately reassumed his place of Master of Requests in the Council of State on the dismissal of M. Barbé Marbois. We now come to the execution of Ney. M. Guizot treats this question in a calm and temperate spirit. He avers that ideas of right and duty were at the moment confused-that there was at the time a kind of moral perturbation, of which Ney presented the most illustrious example. The King and his advisers, he remarks, might have taken these circumstances into consideration, and placing clemency by the side of 'justice, might have displayed a greatness of mind which is not without a full influence in establishing power.' We have no desire to excuse the fickleness and treason of a man who went out of his way, on the abdication of Napoleon, to boast of his loyalty to the Bourbons. But we may here remark that the sacrifice of such a victim at such a time-admitting, as we fully do, that he was not covered by the capitulation of Paris-was not indispensably necessary. The execution of a brave and brilliant soldier, who had but imperfect notions of honour and duty like many of the distinguished though uneducated and humbly-born marshals of Napoleon, awakened the feelings of the nation for one who was considered by the great mass of the people not as a criminal, but as a victim. Such unnecessary severity among many was palliated and excused-among the majority of the nation it hallowed the very crime of which the Marshal was guilty. The manner in which Ney died, too, refusing to have his eyes covered, exclaiming that he had faced death for five-and-twenty years without finding it on the field of battle, converted a political criminal into a military martyr. In speaking of the Reactionist Chamber, called the Chambre introuvable, of which it has been wittily said : 'Dans cette chambre ou l'on fauche, Et le bon sens et la bonne loi, Le Coté gauche n'a jamais droit.' M. Guizot loudly proclaims that no one party can or ought to govern France. It is only by a co-operation of all the educated and independent he considers-and the experience of half a century has fortified his opinion-that France can be preserved from anarchy or despotism. It may be supposed that so distinguished a member of the Doctrinaire party as the ex-minister of Louis Philippe would expatiate largely on the principles and practice of his political sect. He does not, however, do so, but limits his observations to a general explanation of the views of the party. The real source of the power and influence of the Doctrinaires lay not in their numbers-for their number was limited-nor in their talents and acquirements which were great-but in this, that they maintained against revolutionary principles and ideas ideas and principles contrary to those of the old Revolution. They opposed the old Revolution, not to destroy, but to reform it in the name of justice and truth. The Doctrinaires denied the conclusions of those who saw nothing in the Revolution but error and crime, and the nearly opposite conclusions of those who held that the Revolution erred only in excess. They refused to acknowledge the maxims of the old system, or even in a mere speculative sense to adhere to the principles of the Revolution. Here are their views well explained in M. Guizot's own words: 'While frankly adopting the new state of French society, such as our entire history, and not alone the year 1789, had made it, they undertook to establish a government on rational foundation, but totally opposed to the theories in the name of which the old system had been overthrown, or the incoherent principles which some endeavoured to conjure up for its reconstruction. Alternately called on to combat and defend the Revolution, they boldly assumed from the outset an intellectual position, opposing ideas to ideas, and principles to principles, appealing at the same time to reason and experience, affirming rights instead of maintaining interests, and requiring France, not to confess that she had committed evil alone or to declare her impotence for good, but to emerge from the chaos into which she had plunged herself, and to raise her head once more towards heaven in search of light. Let me readily admit that there was also much pride in this attempt; but a pride commencing with an act of humi The Doctrinaire Party. 167 lity, which proclaims the mistake of yesterday with the desire and hope of not repeating them to-day. It was rendering homage to human intelligence while warning it of the limits of its power respecting the past, without undervaluing the present, or abandoning the future. It was an endeavour to bestow on politics sound philosophy, not as a sovereign mistress, but as an adviser and support. I shall state without hesitation, according to what experience has taught me, the thoughts which progressively mingled with this noble design, and impaired or checked its success. What I anxiously desire at present is to indicate its true character. It was to this mixture of philosophical sentiment and political moderation, to this rational respect for opposing rights and facts, to these principles equally new and conservative, anti-revolutionary without being retrograde, and modest in fact although sometimes haughty in expression, that the doctrinarians owed their importance as well as their name. Notwithstanding the numerous errors of philosophy and human reason, the present age still cherishes reasoning and philosophical tastes; and the most determined practical politicians sometimes assume the air of acting upon general ideas, regarding them as sound methods of obtaining justification or credit. The doctrinarians thus responded to a profound and real necessity, although imperfectly acknowledged, of French minds: they paid equal respect to intellect and social order; their notions appeared well suited to regenerate, while terminating the Revolution. Under this double title they found, with partizans and adversaries, points of contact which drew them together, if not with active sympathy, at least with solid esteem: the right hand party looked upon them as sincere royalists; and the left, while opposing them with acrimony, could not avoid admitting that they were neither the advocates of the old system, nor the defenders of absolute power.' It is creditable to the candour and spirit of fairness of M. Guizot that he exhibits no partiality or partizanship in favour of a party of which he was, four and forty years ago, a distinguished member, and of which (if the party have still an organization) he must be considered the distinguished head. In truth, he speaks of the men with whom he so long acted, and whom he afterwards led with a judicial impartiality so philosophic that one would think (a circumstance far from being true) that party spirit is now quite extinct in France. It was as Master of Requests, in the Council of State, while still too young to hold a seat in the Chamber, that M. Guizot took so considerable a part in drawing up the Electoral Law of 1817. In 1814, under Baron Louis, he had distinguished himself in drawing up a paper on the internal condition of France; and he had also a large share in preparing, with Royer Collard, the bill on the liberty of the press, which consecrated, with certain limited and temporary restrictions, the right of free discussion. Now his name was to be associated |