having been prosecuted 112 times. But this was found insufficient; and new laws were proposed to protect the prosperity of France-'a prosperity of five years intermingled with danger'-by shielding 'the king of her choice' against attacks. Order was not yet completely established;' neither a Carlist press nor a republican press could be permitted to exist; and the law proposed for putting them down, equals any Carlist despotism which could be conceived of by a Polignac. Fine and imprisonment were to be the consequence of introducing the king, either directly or indirectly, or by any allusion, into any discussion of the acts of the government; also of expressing any wish, hope, or threat in relation to either Carlism or republicanism. The bill, with a long list of atrocious provisions, was carried by the power of the crown and its functionaries; the heart-stricken opposition, who now saw their country and themselves under a precisely similar oppression to that which they had thrown off five years before, giving solemn warning that 'laws like the present might afflict, but could not terrify, good men;' and that the matter could not end here. The condition of the French nation, in regard to its liberties, was even worse than it had been in 1830; for now the blow at freedom of speech was struck not only by king and ministers, but with the aid of the chambers. The king had got but too much of the representation into his own grasp; and the state of the nation was so much worse than it had been in 1830, that good men thought it their duty rather to endure than to resist under circumstances so perilous to order and freedom. The king followed up this law with prosecutions of editors for assertions in their newspapers, that the ministers wished to shew that they could now do what the ministers of Charles X. attempted in 1830; and that the army was not favourable to the administration, and might be found inclined to a republic, if asked. There was also a creation of thirty new peers, in the king's interest, immediately after the passage of the law which brought offences of the press under the jurisdiction of the Chamber of Peers. It is merely sickening to go into the details of the press-prosecutions of the period. The government was evidently nervous under the perpetual echoing of its own fears in the popular newspapers-at the Carlist hints and demonstrations CHAP. XI.] FRENCH RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND, &c. which followed on the death of Charles X. in 1836, and the speculations on the disaffection of the army which formed the commentary on the Strasburg affair: they had gone too far to recede; and now they found the objectionable matter which formed the material of the prosecutions reproduced in court, under circumstances of emphasis which made it ten times as pernicious as if it had been let alone. There were multitudes who recalled, and repeated to each other, the dying words of Lafayette about their dreadful mistake in regard to their citizen-king; while the few who looked ahead and afar saw how France was daily losing her chance of assuming her proper place in the array of nations, whenever the war of opinion in Europe should arise. Meantime, the one cheering topic in the king's speeches, in successive years, was his good understanding with England. There had been a narrow escape from a war with America-an escape purchased by a somewhat ignominious concession-by a swallowing of some big, hard words, while paying money due to America which ought to have been paid long before. There was a 'momentary misunderstanding with Switzerland,' threatening immediate collision-turning upon the question whether an incendiary of the name of Conseil was or was not a spy of the French government. There had been 'painful losses in Africa,' which had 'deeply afflicted' the king's heart. Algiers was a perpetual and a growing trouble, from its expensiveness and unprofitableness; and there were terrible reverses there at this period-the indomitable Abd-el-Kader and the Emperor of Morocco having inflicted rout and disaster which could not be disguised or palliated, even in the king's speech. The fact was, the French held merely their own fortified settlements in that which they called their colony of Algeria. Beyond the defences nothing could be done; for a vigilant enemy, native to the soil, and animated by the fiercest love of country and religion, was always at hand to cut off stragglers, and destroy the processes of industry. From Algeria, nothing was heard of at this time but 'painful losses,' dismal anticipations, and warnings that the African foe was covertly supported by Turkey. The princes of the blood repaired to Africa, to command and fight; large reinforcements of men and money were sent; and there was new food for discontent at home, in the alleged misdirection of the civil and military affairs of Algeria, and that profitless expense of the settlement, which made it an affliction to France.' There was more unpopularity yet to be incurred by the king. He does not appear to have suffered by his clemency to the ministers of Charles X., whom he released on the death of their master, and permitted to reside on their own estates, on parole-except Polignac, who was exiled for twenty years. His own constituent subjects had perhaps lost much of their indignant feeling towards the Polignacs and Peyronnets, now that a stronger indignation had been incurred by the successor of the old Bourbon king; and the sickly prisoners were allowed quietly to come forth from their captivity, and go home, to live there in obscurity. If the king lost nothing by this, neither did he gain much by an act of amnesty which accompanied it. 539 By royal ordinance, issued in October 1836, sixtytwo political offenders were discharged from further punishment, being merely placed under the surveillance of the police. It was thought that the consequences of political persecution were beginning to be apparent to the king, and that his prudence had taken the alarm; but his warfare with the press did not intermit or slacken, as we have seen. In his speech for 1837, he spoke of the finances as being in a most prosperous state'-that is, promising a small surplus, in the place of the usual deficit; and he intimated that a great mass of public works would be undertaken, to give employment to the people. There was some surprise at this tone being taken during a period of grievous commercial and agricultural distress; but the surprise ceased when it presently appeared that the king meant to ask the chambers for money, for family purposes. His children were growing up and marrying; and he now wanted a provision for the Duc de Nemours, his second son, for whom he asked a gift of two estates, and a marriage-portion for his eldest daughter, the Queen of the Belgians. The latter was obtained, after much angry debating, and many protests against enriching from the public purse the children of a king who was considered very wealthy in the possession of the property of the crown, the estates of the House of Orleans, and, in the name of one of his sons, the wealth of the House of Condé. The other demand was withdrawn for the present, with much mortification on the part of the government; but the times were not such as made the people, or the chambers, willing to endow the Duke de Nemours from the public purse. Another reason was that a fresh call was to be made, on behalf of the eldest son the Duke of Orleans-who was about to marry the Princess Helena of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The chamber doubled the prince's allowance, hitherto £40,000-made a present of £40,000 to the bride for her outfit and fixed her jointure at £12,000. The marriage took place in May 1837; and in August of the next year was born the infant who was hailed as the heir of the throne of France. There were many who doubted whether such would ever be his position; for it had long been said by impartial observers that no son of the citizen-king would ever be permitted to succeed him; but there was probably no one who anticipated the full melancholy of that marriage-the domestic uneasiness-the sudden violent death of the prince in the vigour of his years, and the expulsion of his widow and child from the kingdom, and from all hope of a throne. The superstition which is so easily excited in the French mind had, however, scope on occasion of the marriage-as at the bridal of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette in the last century, and of Napoleon and Marie Louise when fearful accidents happened. When the Duke and Duchess of Orleans entered Paris, a few days after their marriage, a sudden panic seized the crowds that were closely packed in the Champ de Mars. In the rush towards the outlets, nearly thirty persons were trampled to death; and many more were injured. Another child of the Orleans House was married in the autumn of the same year-the beloved Princess Marie-the darling register tells of distress, embarrassment, fear, and local tumults. It was observed by the government, and told in the chamber, that the number of foreign refugees in France was large, and continually on the increase. The Poles were treated with great favour -being admitted free of cost to educational privileges, and trusted with office under government; it was not therefore surprising that there were then nearly 6000 Poles in France. In this fact, perhaps, lay the most hopeful indication that, in case of a war of opinion in Europe, France would be found in front of the western combination which must oppose the incursion of despotism from the east. Amidst such gloom as has been described-gloom over which the royal weddings of the year shed but a dim and partial light-the Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, and men were left in expectation as to what the citizenking would do with a new parliament, and whether the parliament would prove itself most worthy of king or people. A man of an older time-a man of various times, and of a flexibility which adapted him to them allPrince Talleyrand-was about to close his eyes on this new phase of French destiny. He was eightyfour, and it was time for him to be going. There was no further honour for him in the future; he had had his good things in his lifetime; whether they had made him happy or not, he must be satisfied with them now; for there was nothing more for himnot a trace of true honour-not a fragment of esteem not a movement of affection. He was the marvel of his age for suppleness and prosperity; and he will stand in history as a specimen-dry and curious but in no way as a vital being, noble, beautiful, or interesting. He knew everybody for eighty yearsmade use of everybody-consorted with everybody -flattered everybody-served anybody when there was no politic objection to doing so-and cared for nobody. He preserved to the last his most conspicuous talents, being capable of flattery while CHAP. XI.] DEATH OF TALLEYRAND-SPAIN. almost incapable of speech. On the entrance of the king and his sister, a few hours before the old courtier's death, he exclaimed: This is a great day for our house!' It is possible that, in virtue of his long training in worldliness, he might consider the day as more important to his house from a king's visit than from his own death. However that might be, he died at four, the same afternoon, the 17th of May 1838. The tidings of his death spread like a whiff of fresh air among those whom he had parched by the atmosphere of his worldliness. Yet the citizenking is said to have left his chamber in tears. In Spain, nothing passed during the period under review that it is either pleasant or profitable to dwell on. The two interests which absorbed the Spanish nation were the Carlist war and the government of the queen-regent. The liberal party throughout the west of Europe-both governments and individuals—were pledged to the maintenance of the infant queen, Isabella II., upon the throne; and therefore, the queen-regent, her mother, was to govern under a profession of liberalism. It is well known now that she is not a woman who can conceive of the benefits of liberal institutions, or who could be trusted to rule at all. Hard, selfish, intriguing, hopelessly ignorant-she was equally a misfortune, as mother of the little queen, and regent of the country. Her daughter received no training which could fit her for her regal function; and the country could learn no other lesson under Christina than to despise its rulers. The young Isabella had but a poor chance at best for health, sense, knowledge, and integrity. As it was, she became a spoiled child of the lowest order-alternately humoured and tyrannised over-flattered and mortified. She appeared before the eyes of her subjects as a sickly, fretful, and wilful child-eternally eating sweetmeats, and concocting caprices, and wholly incapable of intellectual entertainment or moral devotedness. The public news that reached her was of innumerable insurrections, in half the towns of her kingdom; street-fights, up to her palace doors; attacks on convents, and the murder of ten monks in one place, and twelve in another; seizure of plate from the altar; delivering up of ringleaders by their comrades; and the shooting of scores of citizens in a row. Then, there were changes of ministry for ever; swearings to constitutions, one after another, each of which was to last for ever; pledges of reforms, pompously announced, and never carried out; professions of patriotism and universal benevolence, which were met by imputations of the vilest political profligacy. Amidst the manifold misfortunes of the young queens of Spain and Portugal, none can be greater than the fearful hollowness by which they have been surrounded since their birth. They had better have been daughters of herdsmen on Etna— out with their distaffs upon the slopes, and feeling the vibration under their feet, and seeing the sulphurous chasms open wherever they tread, and flying from clouds of poisonous ashes-better have lived in honest apprehension like this, than have had their ears filled with talk of virtue which, from its staleness, fell dead upon the soul, and have been constantly in the reception of homage so false as to drive them 541 to intrigue or self-will in mere pursuit of a welfare which they could not intrust to anybody else. What the young Isabella heard of was valour, devotedness, martyrdom for freedom, sublime disinterestedness; what she knew to be fact was treachery, cruelty, rapacity, selfish ambition, fickleness, and incapacity. As for the reforms proposed from time to time, and discussed by the cortes, there was no leisure for their prosecution, amidst the perpetual alarms of war, and occurrence of insurrections; and the state of the finances was too desperate to afford hope of any really good government which did not begin by their rectification. As for the other department of Spanish interests -the war between the queen and her uncle, Don Carlos-it is too disgusting and terrible to be needlessly contemplated. In 1835, the Carlists encouraged the discontents of the most extravagant of the liberal party, in the hope of profiting by the embarrassment of the government; and they succeeded. They obtained many advantages in the north of Spain, where the warfare chiefly lay. The cruelty on both sides became so atrocious, that the Duke of Wellington sent out Lord Eliot, during the short Peel administration of that year, to endeavour to bring the hostile leaders to an agreement to spare the lives of their prisoners. For a short time, this did good; but in the next year, a circumstance happened which seemed to turn the combatants on both sides into devils; and it was from that time impossible for human power to soften the diabolism of the war. The mother of Cabrera, the Carlist leader of the hour, had been accused of some traitorous meddling, and, as the queen's general declared in his own defence, sentenced to death. But she was a poor old woman of seventy, whose example, or whose life, could be of no public importance. The governor of Tortosa was required by the queen's officer to deliver her up for execution in retaliation for some slaughterous deeds of her son's. The governor refused; and application was made to General Mina, the queen's commander-inchief, who actually enforced the order, and had the poor creature shot in the public square of Tortosa. Cabrera was driven frantic by this act, being 'romantically attached' to his mother. He declared that thirty women should suffer a similar fate, as his tribute to his mother's memory. He immediately executed four ladies-wives of officers-whom he had captured, and several more afterwards. This is enough. We see here all that is necessary to our review of the time, and to our appreciation of the part taken in the war by Englishmen. It is not pleasant to have to record that Englishmen had any share whatever in a war so barbarous as to shed more or less disgrace on all who voluntarily aided either side; and so ill conducted as to cast no reflex glory on the act. There is something repugnant to the feelings of Englishmen, in our present age and state of advancement, in our countrymen going forth as mercenaries, by their own choice, to fight in a quarrel of succession in any foreign country; and our inclination leads us to be as cursory as possible in our notice of the British Legion which went to Spain under General Evans in 1835. When the queen's government became alarmed by the successes of the Carlists in that year, the cabinet applied for aid to the three powers in alliance with Spain-Britain, France, and Portugal. Britain declined to send troops, though she would not object to France doing so; and the arms and ammunition already furnished to the amount of £200,000, were considered sufficient. France followed the example of England-promising, however, that the Pyrenean frontier should be watched, that no assistance might reach the Carlists by that way. Portugal was bound by a recent treaty to send 6000 troops when required; but it was found inconvenient and dangerous to do so, and the queen broke her engagement-breaking up her cabinet, and one or two succeeding ones on the occasion. Failing thus far, the Spanish cabinet next desired of the King of England that he would suspend the Foreign Enlistment Act, that the Spanish government might raise in England a body of 11,000 mercenaries. This was done in June 1835; and during the summer months, the strange spectacle was seen of recruiting through the towns and villages of Great Britain. It is impossible that the merits of the case could have been understood by all those who enlisted. They went out to war as a trade or an adventure, without even the name of a great popular cause to inscribe upon their banners. We have an account of the affair from a volunteer who owns that he anticipated but little fighting, but hoped that the mere shewing themselves would put force into the queen's troops, and annihilate the Carlists; and then he intended to write a book about Spain, and publish it when he came home at the end of a year. A melancholy picture might be given from his pages of the exasperating and humiliating sufferings undergone by the British Legion in Spain, and the insulting ingratitude with which they were treated; but this is needless, as the whole affair ought to be regarded as a private speculation -no more claiming a place in history than any unfortunate commercial or agricultural adventure, by sea or land. The soldiers of the legion were starved, frozen, shot, distrusted, deceived, forsaken, and finally left unpaid. In the midst of all this, an order issued by General Evans cast a fearful light on the nature of the enterprise which he led. He issued a proclamation in June 1836, declaring that, as the legion was now in junction with the British Marines, every Englishman found fighting on the side of Don Carlos would be put to death as a traitor to the King of England. A commander of mercenaries could with an ill grace so threaten mercenaries on the other side-be the Royal Marines present or absent. If the Foreign Enlistment Act was suspended, it was unreasonable to quarrel with men for using their freedom of enlistment in aid of any cause which might seem good in their eyes. Either way, it appeared that Englishmen were to slay Englishmen in a cause for which none of them cared. During these years, the Carlists now and then swept through Spain and back again to their mountains, as if to prove that they were not unacceptable to the nation who let them pass, without hinderance and without loss. Now we see them down in the extreme south-west-on the very coast-often hemmed in, but always getting out, and dragging two or three royal armies helplessly after them; and again, at the gates of Madrid-the queen quaking in her palace, or flying by night. In the year 1838, the Carlists received some checks, in alternation with their victories. Don Carlos married in that year his sister-in-law, the widow of Don Pedro, having crossed France privately to become his bride, under a dispensation from the pope. It was hoped that this lady might bring some humanising influences into his camp, and relieve the horror with which it was regarded by the world. As for the royal cause -the queen-regent spoke in strong terms of the friendship of the Queen of England, and of hope from various sources; but her voice and manner were faint and faltering, and no one wondered; for the state was bankrupt in fact, while pompous in professions; and the forlorn condition of her little daughter must have struck the regent more forcibly than ever while she was exhibiting the value of the friendship of the Queen of England. It seemed somewhat like a mockery of the monarchical system from one point of view, or an emphatic tribute to it from another, that there should have been at one time three queens in Europe who came to the throne between the ages of three and eighteen; a mockery, if the mental and moral qualities of two out of the three were regarded, and a tribute to the power of the theory and ideal when it was seen how all were supported in their kingly seat-whether in consequence or in spite of their personal qualities. The spoiled child in Spain, and the wilful girl in Portugal, were queens still, in the midst of state poverty, turbulence, and popular discontents without end-as truly as the intelligent and conscientious Victoria, who had reached womanhood before she became queen. Isabella was not yet old enough to cause trouble to her ministers by her own qualities; but her neighbour at Lisbon was. The Queen of Portugal was seventeen when she married again in 1835; and she had been for some time out of her minority. She left her ministers no peace. A serious quarrel at this time was about making her new husband commander-in-chief. She was resolved that it should be so, and had agreed expressly to the arrangement as a part of the marriage stipulations, though her ministers and parliament were pledged by a late decision, made to meet the case, not to permit any foreigner to hold that most responsible office. Ministry and parliament were broken up in consequence; and in the midst of the confusion, before the new cortes met, there was a revolution: the queen was compelled to accept the constitution of 1820, and to deprive her husband of his office, because it was incompatible with the working of that constitution. The assent of the queen and her friends to the instrument was obtained by mere force-by the military surrounding the palace. From that time incessant fluctuations were taking place-risings, fallings, successes, reverses, of the different political parties in the state, till the mind of the reader becomes confused, and gives up all hope of understanding the politics of Portugal. Two matters, however, stand out clear. An heir to the throne was born in |