Kitabı oku: «Louis Philippe», sayfa 5

"Several of the nobles who attend his royal highness are French, and there is no government here which can give protection to any Frenchman from the populace."

Wandering of the Duchess of Orleans.

England did not favor the idea of placing a Sicilian prince on the throne of Spain by the aid of a French duke. Thus the enterprise was finally abandoned. In the then disturbed state of Europe, nearly all the countries being more or less ravaged by the sweep of hostile armies, and there being no regular postal communication, and no free passage from one country to another, it was often impossible for the Duke of Orleans to learn, for long periods of time, what was the fate of his mother and his sister, or even where they were. Upon the decree by the Directory of the expulsion of all the Bourbons from France, the Duchess of Orleans had retired to Figueras, in Spain.

In June, 1808, one of the tempests of war reached that town, and in a terrific bombardment of a few hours it was laid in ashes. The Duchess of Orleans fled from her home at midnight, only a few hours before it was blown into the air by a shower of bombs. Escaping from these scenes of ruin and woe, the widowed, almost childless, and friendless duchess, but still maintaining wonderful fortitude of character, found refuge, after many painful adventures, in Port Mahon, on the island of Minorca.

The Duke of Orleans, thwarted in his plans, regarded with jealousy by the British Cabinet, and assailed with bitterest contumely in both aristocratic and democratic journals, applied to the English Secretary of State for permission to pass to Port Mahon to join his mother. But the British authorities would not consent to his landing anywhere on the Spanish territories. They, however, at length yielded to his importunities so far as to allow him to embark in an English frigate for the island of Malta, the captain of the frigate receiving strict injunctions not even to approach the Spanish coast.

The brother and sister united.

Proceeding to Portsmouth, where he was to embark, he there, to his inexpressible joy, met his only and dearly beloved sister, from whom he had so long been separated. This virtuous, amiable, but unhappy princess, had long been striving to join her wandering brothers and share their fate. Thus far she had been baffled in every endeavor, and two of them had sadly gone down into the grave, unsustained by those consolations which a sister's love and attentions might have afforded them. The princess had finally succeeded in tracing her only surviving brother from Sicily to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar to England. She had thus providentially met him just as he was embarking for Malta.

Their arrival at Malta.

The brother and sister sailed together, and landed at the port of Valetta, in Malta, in February, 1809. Thence the duke dispatched a private messenger, the Chevalier de Brovul, to seek an interview with his mother, to explain to her the impossibility of their going to Minorca, and to entreat her to join them, if possible, in Malta.

"The duke's agent," writes the English historian, Rev. G. N. Wright, "was faithful, intelligent, and active. But the impediments which were placed in his path rendered his progress in negotiation slow, and at length completely obstructed them."

The Spaniards did not love the English, and the English made no efforts to disguise their contempt of the Spaniards. There was no cordial co-operation of action. There was a strong party in Spain in favor of the regeneration of their country by the enlightened and liberal views which Joseph Bonaparte was introducing. There was another powerful party opposed to France, and equally opposed to British domination.

Anarchy in Spain.

"The greatest anarchy," says Mr. Wright, "prevailed in every part of the Peninsula. The Spaniards were divided in their allegiance, and a Bonapartist party was formed in the heart of the country. The national resources were exhausted; and their co-operation with the English wanted that cordiality to which her noble efforts had entitled her, and which Spanish policy ought to have extended to them.

"Brovul, who had been dispatched to convey a mere affectionate expression of regard and love from her children to the venerable duchess, became, on his route, transformed into a political envoy. It was now distinctly and emphatically proposed, by several of the most distinguished men of the Spanish national party, that the Duke of Orleans should be invited over into Spain, and that he should place himself at their head, and lead an army of invasion into France.

"A secret agent was sent into the southern provinces of France to ascertain the public sentiment there. He reported that the people looked to the Duke of Orleans as the only member of the Bourbon family who enjoyed a military reputation; as a prince whose sword had been sharpened by the wrongs of his race, and that they declared, in the most enthusiastic manner, their readiness to follow him to victory or death."

Unfriendly conduct of the Queen of Sicily.

Misled by this report, which proved to be a gross exaggeration, the Spanish Junta appointed the Duke of Orleans to a command destined to act on the frontiers of Catalonia. But the local juntas were opposed to the movement. There was no harmony – no combined action. All was confusion, and the duke made no attempt to enter upon his command.¹⁰ The Sicilian queen, Maria Caroline, irritated by the utter failure of the movement in behalf of her son, and disappointed that the Duke of Orleans had so little influence over the British Cabinet, became quite alienated from her prospective son-in-law, wrote very cold letters to him, and the failure of the marriage treaty was openly spoken of in the court and in the journals.

The duke – whose attachment to the Princess Amelia was very strong – alarmed by these procedures, repaired immediately to Palermo to confront his enemies and to plead his cause. He was successful. The confidence and love of Amelia had never abated. The presence of the illustrious young man – so handsome, so intelligent, so spotless in character, so fascinating and princely in his bearing – soon dispelled all clouds. The queen could no longer withhold her consent to the nuptials. With happiness thus beginning to dawn upon him, the duke wrote as follows to his mother:

Eulogy upon the Duchess of Orleans.

"Their majesties urged some objections to the marriage of a princess of their house to a wandering exile like myself. Upon which I stated that I should apply to you and induce you to advocate my cause, and become security for my principles and fidelity to those to whom I promised allegiance. 'Ah,' replied the queen, 'if you can obtain the advocacy of that angel, it will, indeed, be impossible to refuse you any thing.' I should like, dear mother, to give you a faithful portrait of the princess, who was destined to be my bride, even before her birth. But I feel that I could make but an indifferent and very unworthy sketch. She possesses many amiable and elevated qualities, which I shall take the liberty of summing up in one brief sentence, by assuring you that she seems to be a perfect model of my mother."

The wedding.

Soon after this the duchess embarked in an English frigate for Palermo, and reached there in safety on the 15th of October, 1809. Thus, after long, long years of separation, the survivors of the exiled family, though still in exile, were reunited. On the 25th of November the nuptial benediction was pronounced in the beautiful old Norman chapel of the Palazzo Reale.

"The most remarkable and curious fact connected with the origin and structure of the Capella Reale is, that to the completion of this most perfect illustration of the art of ecclesiastic building three nations have contributed – the Greeks, Saracens, and Normans. And by this fortuitous association the chaste style of the ancients, the cold manner of the Northerns, and the luxurious fashion of the East are all here blended in perfect harmony."¹¹

General Cass, the American minister to France, who, thirty years after these events, wrote from the palace of the Tuileries, where Louis Philippe and his amiable queen were then enthroned, says:

Character of the bride.

Her benevolence.

"The queen was the daughter of that King of Naples who was driven from his Continental dominions by the French, and took refuge, with his family and court, in Sicily. Here the king, Louis Philippe, then poor and in exile, married her; and the match is understood to have been one of affection on both sides. The thirtieth anniversary of their union has just expired, and they are at the summit of human power, with a most interesting family of seven children, and, as is known to every body, with the warmest attachment to each other. In the bitterness of French political discussions no whisper of calumny has ever been heard against the queen. And one who could pass through this ordeal has nothing more to dread from human investigation. A kinder, more anxious mother is nowhere to be found. She is a sincere believer in the Christian religion, and devout in the performance of its duties. Her charity is known throughout the country, and appeals for the distressed are never made to her in vain. In the performance of her regal duties, while her bearing is what the nature of her position requires, there is a kind of affability which seems continually seeking to put all around her as much at their ease as possible."¹²

Chapter V
The Restoration

1814-1817

The Sicilian Court.

The court of Ferdinand IV., one of the most worthless and corrupt of the old feudal dynasties, was maintained in Sicily by the army, the navy, and the purse of England. His Sicilian majesty received from the British Government an annual subsidy of four hundred thousand pounds sterling ($2,000,000), to support the dignity of his throne, and to pay for the troops which Sicily furnished England for her interminable warfare against the French Empire. The Duke of Orleans severely condemned the errors and follies continually developed by the reigning dynasty, and yet he found himself utterly powerless to remedy them. The queen was the ruling power at the court, and her prejudiced and impassioned nature was impervious to any appeals of reason. She knew very well that England did not loan her protection and lavish her gold upon the Sicilian Court from any love for that court, but simply from dread and hatred of the republican principles advocated by Napoleon. She, therefore, often treated the English with the utmost disdain. And yet, sustained by twenty thousand British troops upon the island, she trampled upon all popular rights, consigning, by arbitrary arrests, to the dungeon or to exile all who opposed her sway.

Retirement of the duke.

"Against these violations of law, infringements of liberty, and manifestations of absolutism, the Sicilians rose with becoming firmness. The Duke of Orleans had long foreseen the approaching hurricane, the gathering wrath of an injured people; but finding his remonstrances vain, his principles of government almost directly contrary to those of his august mother-in-law, he retired from a court where there was no room for a virtuous counsellor, and, with his wife and her infant prince, lived in retirement a few miles from Palermo."¹³

The Restoration.

The duke was living tranquilly, and perhaps not unhappily, in this retirement, abstaining from all participation in the intrigues of the Sicilian Court, when, on the morning of the 23d of April, 1814, an English frigate, with every banner floating triumphantly in the breeze, entered the harbor of Palermo. It brought the astounding intelligence of the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons. The exciting tidings soon reached the ears of the duke. He hurried to Palermo, and drove directly to the palace of the English ambassador, where he was greeted with the words:

"I congratulate you upon the downfall of Napoleon, and on the restoration of the illustrious race, of which you yourself are a member, to the throne of their fathers."

For a moment the duke was speechless with astonishment, and then declared the story to be quite incredible. He however was soon convinced that it was even so, by reading a copy of the Moniteur, which gave a detailed account of the whole event. All the shipping and all the forts of Palermo were now resounding with the thunders of exultation. The Duke of Orleans had fought under the tri-color flag. Mingled emotions agitated him. He saw that national banner which had waved so proudly over many a field of victory now trampled in the dust beneath the feet of foreign squadrons, and their allied armies exultingly encamped within the parks of his native city. The restoration of the Bourbons had been accomplished at the expense of the humiliation of his country.

The next day, the commander of the ship which had brought the intelligence called at the residence of the Duke of Orleans, and said to him,

The return to Paris.

"I am directed by Admiral Lord William Bentinck, who is now at Genoa, to wait upon your royal highness, and ascertain if you wish to return to France. If so, my vessel and my personal services are at your command. If you prefer to remain at Naples, I hope you may enjoy that lasting happiness to which, by your eventful and virtuous life, you are so eminently entitled."¹⁴

Arrival in Paris.

The duke pondered the fact that he was invited to return to Paris, not by an envoy from the restored king, but by an officer in the British navy. Still the prince resolved immediately to repair to Paris. Taking an affectionate farewell of his wife and their infant son, he embarked on board the English frigate, accompanied by a single servant, and on the eighteenth of May, 1814, entered his native city, from which he had so long been an exile. Louis XVIII. was already there, having returned to Paris in the rear of the bayonets and the batteries of foreign troops. It was his majesty's expressed wish that the Palais Royal, the hereditary mansion of the Orleans family, should be repaired and restored to its former owners. During the republican and imperial rule, its numerous and spacious apartments had been appropriated to private residences. The duke, upon arriving in Paris, availed himself of temporary accommodations in furnished apartments in the Rue Grange Batelière. One of his first steps was to repair incognito to the home of his fathers. The Swiss servants who guarded the palace still wore the imperial livery. With some reluctance they yielded to the importunities of the stranger, and allowed him to penetrate the interior apartments.

"As he approached the grand staircase, the recollections of his boyhood, the lustre of his ancient race, the agonies of mind he had endured since he last beheld that spot, and gratitude to that Providence which had spared him amidst such universal ruin, completely overwhelmed him, and, falling prostrate on the tesselated pavement, he imprinted a thousand kisses on the cold white marble, while tears gushing from his eyes indicated, while they relieved, the emotions with which he contended."¹⁵

The next day the duke was presented to his majesty, Louis XVIII., at the Tuileries. As he approached the royal presence, the king advanced towards him, and said,

Reception by the Bourbons.

"Your highness was a lieutenant-general in the service of your country twenty-five years ago, and you are still the same."

The assumption adopted by Louis XVIII. that there had been no interruption of the Bourbon reign, and the attempt to blot from history the twenty-five most eventful years in the annals of France, deservedly excited both contempt and ridicule. An American writer of distinction says:

"The unconquerable prejudices of the Bourbons, and their studied ignorance of the feelings of the country they were called to govern after an exile of twenty-five years, were the prognostics as well as the cause of their ultimate fall.

Testimony of an American.

"Their imperial predecessor had indeed left them a difficult task. His career was so brilliant that it may well have dazzled his countrymen, and left them unfitted for a milder domination. He was, indeed, a wonderful man; and I have been more powerfully impressed than ever, since my arrival in France, with the prodigious force of his character, and with the gigantic scope as well as the vast variety of his plans.

"I am satisfied that circumstances have not been favorable to a just appreciation of the whole character of Napoleon in the United States. While he was at the head of the nation, we surveyed him very much through the English journals, and we imbibed all the prejudices which a long and bitter war had engendered against him in England. To be sure, his military renown could not be called in question; but of his civic talents a comparatively humble estimate was formed. I have since learned to correct this appreciation."¹⁶

Pride of the Bourbons.

It was the undisguised effort of Louis XVIII., now restored by foreign armies to the throne, to annihilate the memory of all that France had achieved at home and abroad, under the administration of Napoleon. The tri-color was exchanged for the white banner of the Bourbons, and the eagles were replaced by the Gallic cock. All the insignia of imperialism were carefully obliterated. The evidence seems quite conclusive that the king, notwithstanding his apparent reconciliation with the Duke of Orleans, still regarded him with much suspicion, and would have been very willing that he should have continued in exile. Indeed, the king seemed disposed to revive old family feuds, that he might keep the duke estranged, as far as possible, from the sympathies of the Legitimist party.

The Duchess of Orleans was of royal blood, the daughter of a king. But the father of the Duke of Orleans had worn only a ducal, not a royal crown. The king, consequently, gave orders that, whenever the Duke of Orleans and his suite should appear at court, both of the folding-doors of the grand entrance should be thrown open for the duchess, while but one should be opened for her husband.

In July the duke embarked in a French ship of the line, with Baron Athalin and Count Sainte Aldegonde as his aids, to transfer his family from Palermo to Paris. Early in August they were luxuriously domiciled in his magnificent ancestral home. Madame de Genlis, now venerable in years, and having ever retained the reverence and affection of her distinguished pupils, hastened to join the ducal family in the saloons of the Palais Royal.

Madame de Genlis.

"This resolution," she writes, "procured me the inexpressible happiness of once more seeing my pupils, Mademoiselle and the Duke of Orleans. In our first interview they both displayed to me all the affection, all the emotion and delight which I myself experienced. Alas! how deeply I felt, at this meeting, the absence of the beloved pupils, the Duke of Montpensier and his brother Count Beaujolais, who both died in exile."

Triumphal advance of Napoleon.

The winter passed rapidly away, and on the 5th of March, 1815, to the dismay of the Bourbons, and of all the crowned heads of Europe, the tidings reached Paris that Napoleon had left Elba, landed at Cannes, and, accompanied by ever-increasing thousands of enthusiastic supporters, was on the triumphal march towards the metropolis. The most terrible proclamations were hurled against him by Louis XVIII., but all in vain. All opposition melted before the popular emperor. The path from Cannes to Paris was over six hundred miles in length, through the heart of France. But the Bourbons, with the armies of France nominally at their disposal, and the sympathies of all the feudal dynasties in Europe enlisted in their behalf, could summon no force sufficient to arrest the progress of that one unarmed man. The Duke of Orleans hastened to the presence of his majesty, and, addressing the trembling monarch, said:

"Sire, as for me, I am prepared to share both your bad and good fortune. Although one of your royal race, I am your subject, servant, and soldier. Do with me as your majesty pleases, for the honor and peace of our country."

The king sent him to Lyons; to co-operate with the king's brother, the Count d'Artois, subsequently Charles X., in the endeavor to retard, by every means in their power, the advance of the ex-emperor upon Paris. A council of war was immediately held, the Count d'Artois presiding. Marshal Macdonald proved to the satisfaction of all present that it would be impossible to prevent the occupation of Lyons by Napoleon. Thence his march to Paris would be unimpeded.

All was consternation in the Bourbon Court. Louis Philippe broke up his establishment, and dispatched his wife and family, by the most expeditious route, to England. The armies of France were concentrated as rapidly as possible on the borders of the Rhine, where the allied troops could hurry to their support. The Duke of Orleans was invested with the command of this army of the north. Louis XVIII., surrounded by a small body of Guards, entered his carriage and fled precipitately across the Rhine, to place himself again under the protection of the allied sovereigns who were convened in Congress at Vienna.

Flight of Louis XVIII.

The accompanying cut will give the reader a vivid idea of the departure. The king was enormously fat. His figure, with long body and very short legs, was peculiar almost to deformity. He entered his carriage for his flight, with apparently none to regret his departure, at one o'clock, on the morning of the 19th of March. The evening of the next day, the 20th, the emperor arrived, and, surrounded by the acclamations of thousands, was borne, in a scene of indescribable enthusiasm, on the shoulders of the people into the vacant palace.

"The moment that the carriage stopped," says Alison, "he was seized by those next the door, borne aloft in their arms, amidst deafening cheers, through a dense and brilliant crowd of epaulets, hurried literally above the heads of the throng up the great staircase into the saloon of reception, where a splendid array of the ladies of the imperial court, adorned with a profusion of violet bouquets, half concealed in the richest laces, received him with transports, and imprinted fervent kisses on his cheeks, his hands, and even his dress. Never was such a scene witnessed in history."

Signal triumph of Napoleon.

This triumphal journey of Napoleon for nearly seven hundred miles, through the heart of France, alone and unaided invading a kingdom of thirty millions of inhabitants, vanquishing all the armies of the Bourbons, and regaining the throne without drawing a sword or firing a musket, presents one of the most remarkable instances on record of the power of one mighty mind over human hearts. Boundless enthusiasm, from citizens and soldiers, greeted him every step of his way. A more emphatic vote in favor of the Empire could not have been given. A more legitimate title to the throne no monarch ever enjoyed. And yet the Allies, in renewing the war against him, had the unblushing effrontery to proclaim that they were contending for the liberties of the people against the tyranny of an usurper! In view of such achievements of Napoleon, we do not wonder that Lamartine, his unrelenting political foe, should say that, as a man, "Napoleon was the greatest of the creations of God."

Retirement of the Bourbons.

"The emperor, notwithstanding the Bourbons had set a price upon his head, issued special orders that they should not be molested; that they should be permitted to retire without injury or insult. He could, with perfect ease, have taken them prisoners, and then, in possession of their persons, could have compelled the Allies to reasonable terms. But his extraordinary magnanimity prevented him from pursuing such a course. Louis XVIII., accompanied by a funeral procession of carriages containing members of his family, his ministers, and returned emigrants, trembling and in dismay, retired to Lille, on the northern frontiers of France. The inhabitants of the departments through which he passed gazed silently and compassionately upon the infirm old man, and uttered no word of reproach; but as soon as the cortége had passed, the tri-colored banner was run up on steeple and turret, and the air resounded with shouts of Vive l'Empereur."¹⁷

Immediately Napoleon dispatched by telegraph the following order throughout France: "The emperor having entered Paris at the head of the very troops that were sent to oppose him, the civil and military authorities are hereby cautioned against obeying any other than the imperial orders, and are enjoined, under the last penalty of military law, to hoist the tri-colored flag upon the receipt of this intelligence."

Efforts of the Duke of Orleans.

Regardless of this order, the Duke of Orleans, in the north of France, made very great efforts, by visiting all the posts, to inspire the soldiers to fidelity to the Bourbons, and to rouse them to oppose the emperor. "Finding," says a writer, who was in sympathy with his efforts, "his great exertions as fruitless as the assaults of the winds upon the mountain's rocky ridge, he at length abandoned the project. The conduct of Louis XVIII. was but little calculated to inspire his subjects with respect, or to restore their fading fidelity. Having reached Lille on the 22d, on the next day he fled, with indecent haste, towards the frontier, not remaining long enough, even if his faculties had been sufficiently collected to do so, to give final or further instructions to the lieutenant-general. Terror of Napoleon occupied his every thought; and the wings of the wind were unequal to keep pace with the eagerness of his mind to escape from the iron grasp of the mortal enemy of his race. Louis Philippe had lent the protection and encouragement of companionship to his majesty to a distance of five miles from Lille; yet the timid monarch never delivered to him any instructions or command as to the operations of the army, nor confessed his future project."¹⁸

Dejection of the Duke of Orleans.

The Duke of Orleans was annoyed and irritated by the pusillanimity displayed by the king, and by the mortifying reserve with which he himself was treated. He called upon the commandants of the different towns, and informed them that the king had left France without giving him any authority to act. He then issued a public proclamation, in which he resigned his entire command to Marshal Mortier. In this he said:

"I go to bury myself in retirement and oblivion. The king being no longer in France, I can not transmit you any further orders in his name; and it only remains for me to release you from the observation of all the orders which I have already transmitted to you, and to recommend you to do every thing that your excellent judgment and pure patriotism will suggest to you. Farewell, my dear marshal. My heart is oppressed in writing this word."

On the 22d Louis Philippe broke up his establishment at head-quarters, and set out to rejoin his family in England. He had but little hope then of ever again revisiting France. His sufferings must indeed have been agonizing in finding all his newly-born hopes vanishing, and in again entering upon the weary life of an exile. Arriving in England, he directed his steps to the beautiful and sequestered retreat of Twickenham. It was a hallowed spot, endeared to him by the memory of days of tranquillity and of a pensive joy, and by scenes of heart-rending anguish, as he had there seen his two beloved brothers sinking sadly into the grave.

Calumnies of the journals.

"The triumph of legitimacy," says Mr. Wright, "which dethroned Napoleon," inspired its followers in foreign lands with new zeal, fresh devotion, and increased prospects of ascendency. In England the most servile of that faction had the malignity to invent and publish, by means of the dishonest portion of the daily press, the grossest and most painful calumnies against the Duke of Orleans. The Bourbon faction, expert at calumny and intrigue, employed every means their art supplied to accomplish their darling object, which was the still further separation of the elder from the younger branch of the royal family. It was now that the persecutors of the Duke of Orleans hit upon the scheme of defaming him by forgery. They forged various protestations and confessions of faith, which they subscribed with the name of Louis Philippe, and procured their publication in English journals; "the tendency of which was to place him in a false position with respect to the elder branch of his family."

Return of the Bourbons to Paris.

The hundred days of Napoleon's second reign passed rapidly away. The defeat at Waterloo restored Louis XVIII. to the throne, with a better prospect of its permanent possession. Napoleon, in the long agony at St. Helena, expiated the crime of raising the banner of Equal Rights for All Men, in opposition to the exclusive privileges of kings and nobles. Louis XVIII., escorted by nearly a million of foreign troops, returned to the Tuileries. All the members of the royal family followed from their wide dispersion. Louis Philippe joined the crowd, and again presented himself in the royal saloons. The king suspected him, and in the presence of a full court received him with marked coldness. Conscious of his own unpopularity, and of the general impression that the Duke of Orleans was tinctured with liberal sentiments, the king was ever apprehensive that a faction might arise in favor of placing the Duke of Orleans upon the throne.

The shrewd, intriguing Fouché, duke of Otranto, in a letter written to the Duke of Wellington at this time, says:

"The personal qualities of the Duke of Orleans, the remembrance of Jemappes, the possibility of making a treaty which would conciliate all interests, the name of Bourbon, which might serve outside, but not be pronounced within – all these motives, and many others that might be mentioned, present in this last choice a perspective of repose and security even to those who could not perceive in them an omen of happiness."

The duke's possessions restored.

The duke returns to the Palais Royal.

Though the king declined the assistance of the Duke of Orleans in reorganizing his government, he restored to him his vast ancestral possessions. Recrossing the Channel, the duke conducted his family from Twickenham back to the sumptuous saloons of the Palais Royal. A royal ordinance commanded all the princes of the blood royal to take seats in the Chamber of Peers. Under this decree the Duke of Orleans became a member of that august and influential body.