XII. 1823. 1 Ante, c. iii. § 87. CHAP. of France and the dignity of the Crown rendered it imperative on him to have recourse to arms, after having exhausted the councils of peace. He has declared his wish that a hundred thousand men should assemble under the orders of a prince who, at the passage of the Drome, 2 Ann. Hist. showed himself as valiant as Henry IV.1 With generous confidence he has intrusted the guard of the white flag Moniteur, to the captains who have triumphed under other colours. They will teach him the path of victory; he has never forgotten that of honour." 2 vi. 38, 40; Lam. vii. 129, 137; Feb. 15, 1823. This splendid speech made a prodigious sensation in France, greater perhaps than any other since the days of Mirabeau. It expressed with equal force and felicity the inmost and best feelings of the Royalists; and those feelings were on this occasion, perhaps for the first time, in unison with the sentiments of the great majority of Frenchmen. The nation had become all but unanimous at the sound of the trumpet. The inherent adventurous and warlike spirit of the Franks had reappeared in undiminished strength at the prospect of war. Chance, or the skilful direction of Government, had at last found an object in which all classes concurred-in which the ardent loyalty of the Royalist coincided with the buoyant ambition of the people. In vain the Liberal chiefs, who anticipated so much from the triumph of their allies beyond the Pyrenees, and dreaded utter discomfiture from their defeat, endeavoured to turn aside the stream, and to envenom patriotic by party feelings. The attempt wholly failed: the Chambers were all but unanimous in favour of the war; and their feelings were re-echoed from Calais to the Pyrenees.3 M. Talleyrand made a remarkable speech on this occasion, which deserves to be recorded, as one of the most unfortunate prophecies ever made by a man of ability on the future issue of affairs. "It is just sixteen years to-day," said he, "since I was called by him who then governed the world to give him my advice on the struggle in which XII. 1823. he was about to engage with Spain. I had the misfortune CHAP. to displease him because I revealed the future-because I unfolded the misfortunes which might arise from an aggression as unjust as it was inexpedient. Disgrace was the reward of my sincerity. Strange destiny!-which now, after so long an interval, leads me to give the same counsels to a legitimate sovereign! It is my part, who have had so large a share in the double Restoration—who, by my efforts, I may say by my success, have wound up my glory and my responsibility entirely with the alliance between France and the house of Bourbon-to contribute as much as lies in my power to prevent the work of wisdom and justice from being compromised by rash and insane passions." When this counsel on the Spanish war is compared with the result which occurred a few months afterwards, the difference is sufficiently striking. Talleyrand, with his sagacity and experience, proved a more fallacious counsellor than Chateaubriand, with his poetry and romance. Wisdom was found in the inspirations of genius rather than the deductions of experience. The reason is, that Talleyrand thought the result would be the same, because it was an attack by France on Spain, forgetting that the circumstances were materially different, and that the Bourbon invasion had that in its favour which in that of Napoleon was altogether awanting-viz., the support of the great body of the people. A memorable example of the important truth, that events in history are not to be drawn into a precedent unless the material circumstances attending them are similar; and 1 Lam. vii. that it is in the faculty of discerning where that similarity 120; Ann. exists that the highest proof of political wisdom is to be 34, 35. found.1 1 Hist. vi. 55. credit of The enthusiasm of the Chamber of Deputies in favour of the war did not evaporate merely in vehement harangues Vote of from the tribune; substantial acts testified their entire 100,000,000 adhesion to the system of the Government. They voted, by a very large majority, a supplementary credit of francs. XII. 1823. CHAP. 100,000,000 francs (£4,000,000) for carrying on the war, to be put at the disposal of the minister. The state of the revenue this year was very flattering, and demonstrated how rapidly the national resources were augmenting under the influence of the peace, freedom, and security vi. 39, 40. of property which France was enjoying under the mild rule of the Bourbon princes.1* 1 Ann. Hist. 56. Manuel, in ber of De puties: his speech. In the course of the debate on this grant, an incident Affair of M. occurred, which, in a more unfavourable state of the public the Cham- mind, might have overturned the monarchy. M. Manuel was put forward by the Opposition to answer the speech. of M. Chateaubriand, he being the orator on the Liberal side whose close and logical reasoning, as well as powers of eloquence, were deemed most capable of deadening the sensation produced by the splendid oration of the Foreign Minister. He said in the course of his speech: "The Spaniards, it is said, are mutually cutting each other's throats, and we must intervene to prevent one party from destroying the other. It is without doubt a singular mode of diminishing the horrors of civil war, to superinduce to them those of foreign hostilities. But suppose you are successful. The insurrection is crushed in Spain; it is annihilated; the friends of freedom have laid down their arms. What can you do? You cannot for ever remain in the Peninsula; you must retire; and when you do so, a new explosion, more dangerous than the former, will break forth. Consult history: has ever a revolution in favour of civil liberty been finally subdued? Crushed it may be for the moment; but the genius which has produced it is imperishable. Like Antæus, the giant regains his strength every time he touches the earth. 57. "The civil war which recently raged in Spain was Continued. mainly your own work; the soldiers of the faith' only took up arms in the belief they would be supported by * It exhibited a surplus of 42,945,907 francs (£1,680,000), so that the extraordinary credit only required to be operated upon to the extent of 57,054,093 francs (£2,340,000).-Budget, 1823; Annuaire Historique, vi. 39, 40. XII. 1823. you. How, then, can you find in the consequences of CHAP. your own acts a justification of your intervention? Can you justify deeds of violence by perfidy? You say you wish to save Ferdinand and his family. If you do, beware of repeating the same circumstances which, in a former age, conducted to the scaffold victims for whom you daily evince so warm and legitimate an interest. Have you forgotten that the Stuarts were only overturned because they sought support from the stranger; that it was in consequence of the invasion of the hostile armies that Louis XVI. was precipitated from the throne? Are you ignorant that it was the protection accorded by France to the Stuarts which caused the ruin of that race of princes? That succour was clandestine, it is true; but it was sufficient to encourage the Stuarts in their resistance to public opinion; thence the resistance to that opinion, and the misfortunes of that family-misfortunes which it would have avoided if it had sought its support in the nation. Need I remind you that the dangers of the royal family have been fearfully aggravated when the stranger invaded our territory, and that revolutionary vi. 72, 73; France, feeling the necessity of defending itself by new 161, 163. forces and a fresh energy 66 "1 1 Ann. Hist. Lam. vii. the Cham At these words a perfect storm arose in the Chamber. 58. Order, order!" was shouted on the Right; "this is Storm in regicide, justified and provoked." "Expulsion, expulsion!" bers. "Let us chase the monster from our benches!" exclaimed a hundred voices. The president, M. Ravez, seeing the speaker had been interrupted in the midst of a sentence, and that the offence taken arose from a presumed meaning of words which were to follow, not of what had actually been used, hesitated with reason to act upon such speculative views, and contented himself with calling M. Manuel to order. So far were the Royalists from being satisfied with this moderate concession, that they instantly rose up in a body, surrounded the president's chair with loud cries and threats, demanding that the apologist of XII. 1823. CHAP. regicide should be instantly expelled from the Chamber; while one of them, more audacious than the rest, actually pulled M. Manuel from the tribune, and, mounting in his stead, demanded in a stentorian voice the vengeance of France on the advocate of assassins. Meanwhile M. Manuel, conscious that the sentence which had been interrupted, if allowed to be completed, would at once dispel the storm, was calm and impassible in the midst of the vi. 70, 73; uproar; but that only made matters worse with the infuMoniteur, riated majority; and at length the president, finding all 1823; Lam. his efforts to appease the tumult fruitless, gave the wellknown signal of distress by covering his head, and broke up the meeting.1 1 Ann. Hist. Feb. 27, vii. 162, 165. 59. M. Manuel. This scene had already been sufficiently violent, and Expulsion of indicative of the risks which the representative system ran in France from the excitable temper of the people; but it was as nothing to that which soon after ensued. The Royalists, when the meeting was dissolved, rushed in a body out of the Chamber, and broke into separate knots, to concert ulterior operations; while the Liberals remained on their benches, in the midst of which M. Manuel wrote a letter to the president, in which he stated how the sentence which had been interrupted was to have been concluded, and contended for his right to finish the sentence, and then let its import be judged of by the Chamber. The sitting was resumed, to consider this explanation; but a heated Royalist from the south, M. Forbin des Essarts, instantly ascended the tribune, and demanded the expulsion of the orator "who had pro "Je demandais si on avait oublié qu'en France la mort de l'infortuné Louis XVI. avait été précédée par l'intervention armée des Prussiens et des Autrichiens, et je rappelais comme un fait connu de tout le monde que c'est alors que la France révolutionnaire, sentant le besoin de se défendre par des forces et une énergie nouvelles." C'est içi que j'ai été interrompu. Si je ne l'eusse pas été, ma phrase eûte èté prononcée ainsi-" Alors la France révolu tionnaire, sentant le besoin de se défendre par des forces et une énergie nouvelles, mit en mouvement toutes les masses, exalta toutes les passions populaires, et amema ainsi de terribles excès et une déplorable catastrophe au milieu d'une généreuse résistance.-M. MANUEL au Président, 26 Feb. 1823; Annuaire Historique, vi. 168. Moniteur, 27th Feb. |