Memoirs of Chateaubriand Volume V — Book XIV Part 1

When the swallows near the moment of their departure, there is one that flies away first to announce the approaching passage of the rest: mine were the first wings that preceded the last flight of Legitimacy.

Did the praises with which the newspapers loaded me charm me?

Not in the least.

Some of my friends tried to console me by assuring me that I was on the point of becoming Prime Minister; that this party stroke so frankly played decided my future: they thought they saw in me an ambition of which I did not possess the very germ.

I do not understand how any man who has lived but eight days with me can fail to have perceived my total lack of that passion--a very lawful one, for that matter--which enables one to push through a political career.

I was ever on the watch for the occasion to retire: if I was so devoted to the Roman Embassy, that was just because it led to nothing and because it was a retreat in a blind alley.

Lastly, at the bottom of my conscience I had a certain fear of having already driven opposition too far; I was forcibly about to become its bond, its centre and its object: I was frightened of it, and this fear increased my regrets for the tranquil shelter I had lost.

Be this as it may, much incense was burnt before the wooden idol that had climbed down from its altar.

M.

de Lamartine, a new and brilliant light of France, wrote to me on the subject of his candidature for the Academy[163], and ended his letter thus: "M. de La Noue, who has just been spending a few minutes with me, told me that he had left you occupying your noble leisure in raising a monument to France.

Each of your voluntary and courageous disgraces will thus bring its tribute of esteem to your name and of glory to your country."

This noble letter from the author of the _Méditations poétiques_ was followed by one from M. de Lacretelle[164].

He in his turn wrote: "What a moment they choose to outrage you, you the man of sacrifices, you the man to whom fine actions come as easily as fine works!

Your resignation and the formation of the new Ministry had appeared to me, in advance, in the light of two connected events.

You have accustomed us to acts of devotion, as Bonaparte accustomed us to victory; but he had many companions, whereas you have not many imitators."

Two very literary men, both writers of great merit, M. Abel Rémusat[165] and M. Saint-Martin[166], alone at that time had the weakness to rise up against me: they were attached to M. le Baron de Damas.

I can imagine that people are a little irritated by men who despise places: that is one of those pieces of insolence that cannot be endured.

M.

Guizot himself deigned to visit me in my abode; he thought he might overcome the immense distance which Nature had set between us; on accosting me, he said these words full of all that he owed to himself: "Monsieur, things are very different to-day!"

[Illustration: Guizot.

] In the year 1829, M. Guizot had need of me for his election; I wrote to the electors of Lisieux, and they carried him[167]; M. de Broglie[168] thanked me in the note that follows: "Permit me to thank you, monsieur, for the letter which you have been good enough to address to me.

I have made the right use of it, and I am convinced that, in common with all that comes from you, it will bear fruit and salutary fruit.

For my part, I am as grateful to you as though I myself were concerned, for there is no event with which I have more closely identified myself nor which arouses in me a keener interest."

The July days found M. Guizot a deputy, and the result was that I am partly the cause of his political rise: sometimes Heaven hearkens to the prayer of the humble.

[Sidenote: M de Polignac's colleagues.

] M.

de Polignac's first colleagues were Messieurs de Bourmont[169], de La Bourdonnaye, de Chabrol, de Courvoisier[170] and de Montbel[171].

On the 17th of June 1815, at Ghent, I had been waiting on the King, when I met at the foot of the stairs a man in a frock-coat and muddy boots who was going up to His Majesty.

By his lively expression, his finely-shaped nose, his beautiful, soft, adder-like eyes, I recognised General Bourmont: he had deserted Bonaparte's army.

The Comte de Bourmont is a meritorious officer, skilful at extricating himself from difficult situations, but one of those men who, when placed in the front rank, see obstacles without being able to conquer them.

They are made to be led, not to lead.

He is fortunate in his sons, and Algiers will leave him a name.

The Comte de La Bourdonnaye, formerly my friend, is certainly the most disagreeable personage that ever lived: he lets fly at you the instant you approach him; he attacks the speakers in the Chamber, as he does his neighbours in the country; he cavils over a word, just as he goes to law about a ditch or a drain.

On the very morning of the day on which I was appointed Foreign Minister, he came to tell me that he was breaking with me: I was a minister.

I laughed and let my male termagant go about his business: laughing himself, he looked like a thwarted bat[172].

M.

de Montbel, at first Minister of Public Instruction, replaced M. de La Bourdonnaye at the Interior when the latter resigned, and M. de Guernon-Ranville[173] followed M. de Montbel at the Ministry of Public Instruction.

Men were preparing for war on both sides: the Ministerial Party launched ironical pamphlets against the _Représentatif_; the Opposition organized itself and spoke of refusing to pay taxes in the event of a violation of the Charter.

A public association, called the Breton Association, was formed to resist the Administration: my fellow-countrymen have often taken the lead in our later revolutions;

every Breton head has something in common with the winds that vex the shores of our peninsula.

A newspaper[174] set up with the avowed object of overthrowing the Old Dynasty came to excite men's minds.

The handsome young bookseller, Sautelet[175], pursued with suicidal mania, had several times felt the longing to make his death useful to his party by some bold stroke; he was charged with the business part of the republican sheet: Messieurs Thiers[176], Mignet[177] and Carrel[178] were its editors.

The patron of the National, M. le Prince de Talleyrand, did not put a sou into the cash-box; he was content to defile the paper's spirit by adding to the common fund his quotum of treason and rottenness.

On this occasion I received the following note from M. Thiers: [Sidenote: A note from M. Theirs.

] "MONSIEUR,

"Not knowing whether the service of a new paper will be performed with exactness, I send you the first number of the _National.

_ All my collaborators unite with me in begging you to consent to regard yourself, not as a subscriber, but as a gentle reader.

If, in this first article, the object of great anxiety to me, I have succeeded in expressing opinions that meet with your approval, I shall feel reassured and certain of being in the right road.

"Receive, monsieur, my homage.

"A. THIERS."

I shall return to the editors of the _National_; I shall tell how I have known them; but I must at once place M. Carrel on one side: superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, he had the simplicity to look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as coming after writers whom he excelled; he upheld with his sword the opinions which those penmen laid bare.

While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations for the Algerian Expedition were being completed.

General Bourmont, the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that expedition: was it his intention to escape responsibility for the _coup d'État_ which he felt coming?

That was likely enough, to judge from his antecedents and his craftiness; but it was a misfortune for Charles X.

Had the general been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands of M. de Polignac.

Before striking the blow, presuming that he would have agreed to it, M. de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the whole of the Royal Guard in Paris; he would have got ready money and the necessary provisions, so that the soldier should have wanted for nothing.

Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from the French ports lately so abandoned.

The roads were covered with ships which saluted the land as they moved away.

Steamboats, a new discovery of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to the other, like sirens or the aides-de-camp of the admiral.

The Dauphin stood on shore, where all the population of the town and mountains had gathered.

After snatching his kinsman, the King of Spain, from the hands of the revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which Christianity was to be delivered: could he have believed night to be so near at hand[179]?

[Sidenote: The Algerian expedition.

] The times were past in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III.

, not yet King of Poland!

Algiers was about to become our daughter and our conquest, without anybody's permission, without England's daring to prevent us from taking that "Emperor's Fort" which recalled Charles V. and the change in his fortunes[180].

[Illustration: The Princesse de Lieven.

] It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French spectators to greet, with Bossuet's greeting, the generous vessels, ready to break the slave's chain with their prows; a victory increased by the cry uttered by the Eagle of Meaux when he announced the future success to the Great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb for the dispersal of his dynasty: "Thou shalt yield, or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the spoils of Christianity.

Thou saidst in thy heart of greed: "I hold the sea under my laws and the nations are my prey!'

"The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty among its young.

Already thou art releasing thy slaves.

Louis has shattered the irons under which thou wert loading his subjects, who are born to be free under his glorious empire.

The astonished pilots cry beforehand: "'Who is like unto Tyre?

And yet she kept silence in the midst of the sea[181].'

" O splendid words, could you not retard the crumbling of the Throne?

Nations proceed towards their destinies; like certain of Dante's shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune.

Those vessels, which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when Death called him to Carthage.

O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished.

The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey: "It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail."

Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon, followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa?

Did not M.

du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]?

What came of that flight executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop?

Let us listen to M. de Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton: "Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in front of those same shores over five hundred ships.

Then, sixty thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field in Africa.

To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only retinue....

At the moment when the guard took up arms, according to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all conversation ceased on deck.

I uncovered with the same respect that I should have shown to the old King himself.

I knelt within my heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly contemplating the symbol[185]."

The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March.

In the Speech from the Throne, the King was made to say: "If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate, I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."

Charles X. uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites himself with the sound of his own voice: the more forcible the words were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it.

[Sidenote: The address of the Chamber.

] The Address in reply was drawn up by Messieurs Étienne[187] and Guizot.

It said: "Sire, the Charter consecrates, as a right, the intervention of the country in the discussion of its public interests.

This intervention renders the permanent accord between the political views of the Government and the wishes of your people the indispensable condition of the regular march of public affairs.

Sire, our loyalty, our devotion condemn us to tell you that this accord does not exist."

The Address was voted by a majority of 221 against 181. An amendment was moved by M. de Lorgeril[188] to do away with the phrase relating to the refusal of concurrence.

This amendment obtained only 28 votes.

If the 221 had been able to foresee the result of their vote, the Address would have been rejected by a huge majority.

Why does Providence not sometimes raise a corner of the veil that covers the future?

It gives, it is true, a presentiment to certain men; but they do not see clear enough to make sure of their way, they fear to make a mistake, or, if they venture upon predictions which are accomplished, no one believes them.

God does not push aside the cloud from the background in which He acts; when He permits great evils to take place, it is because He has great plans, plans extending over a general plane, unrolled in a deep horizon beyond our view and beyond the reach of our short-lived generations.

The King, in his Reply to the Address, declared that his resolution was unchangeable, in other words, that he would not dismiss M. de Polignac.

The dissolution of the Chamber was resolved upon: Messieurs de Peyronnet and de Chantelauze replaced Messieurs de Chabrol and Courvoisier, who resigned; M. Capelle was appointed Minister of Commerce.

They had a score of men around them capable of being ministers; they might have sent for M. de Villèle again; they might have taken M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani.

I had already proposed the two latter to the King when, after the fall of M. de Villèle, the Abbé Frayssinous was told to offer me the Ministry of Public Instruction.

But no; they held capable men in abhorrence.

In their fervour for nullity, they sought, as though to humiliate France, for the smallest thing she had to put at her head.

They had dug up M. Guernon de Ranville, who, however, was the bravest of the unknown band, and the Dauphin had besought M. de Chantelauze to save the Monarchy.

The decrees dissolving the Chamber summoned the district electoral colleges for the 23rd of June 1830 and the departmental colleges for the 3rd of July[189], only twenty-seven days before the death of the Elder Branch.

The parties, all exceedingly excited, drove everything to extremes: the Ultra-Royalists spoke of giving the Crown the dictatorship; the Republicans dreamt of a republic under a directorate or convention.

The Tribune[190], the organ of the latter party, appeared, and went beyond the National.

The great majority of the country was still in favour of the Legitimate Monarchy, but with concessions and enfranchisement from Court influences; every ambition was aroused, every one hoped to become a minister: storms hatch insects.

Those who wished to force Charles X. to become a constitutional monarch thought they were right.

They believed the Legitimacy to be deep-rooted: they had forgotten the weakness of the man; the Royalty might be driven, the King could not: it was the individual that ruined us, not the institution.

The deputies of the new Chamber arrived in Paris: of the 221, 202 had been re-elected; the Opposition numbered 270 votes: the Ministry 145;

the Crown Party was therefore lost.

The natural result would have been the resignation of the Ministry: Charles X. was stubbornly determined to defy everything, and the _coup d'État_ was resolved upon.

[Sidenote: Dieppe and back to Paris.

] I left for Dieppe at four o'clock in the morning on the 26th of July, the very day on which the Ordinances appeared.

I was in fairly good spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was followed, at some distance, by a terrible storm.

I supped and slept at Rouen without learning anything, regretting that I was not able to visit Saint-Ouen and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the Museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome.

I arrived at Dieppe the next day, the 27th, at mid-day.

I went to the hotel where M. le Comte de Boissy[191], my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for me.

I dressed and went to call on Madame Récamier.

She occupied an apartment whose windows looked out on the sands.

I spent a few hours in talking and watching the waves.

Suddenly Hyacinthe appeared; he brought me a letter which M. de Boissy had received, telling with great praises of the issue of the Ordinances.

A moment later, my old friend Ballanche entered; he had come straight from the diligence and held the newspapers in his hand.

I opened the _Moniteur_ and read the official documents, without believing my eyes.

One more government which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame!

I told Hyacinthe to ask for horses, in order to set out for Paris again.

I

climbed back into my carriage, at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in anxiety.

It is true that, for a month past, people had been murmuring something about a _coup d'État_, but no one had taken any notice of the rumour, which seemed absurd.

Charles X. had lived on the illusions of the Throne: a kind of mirage is formed around princes, and it imposes upon them by displacing the object and making them see chimerical landscapes in the sky.

I took away the _Moniteur_ with me.

So soon as it was light, on the 28th, I read, re-read and commented on the Ordinances[192].

The Report to the King which served as a preamble struck me in two ways: the observations on the drawbacks of the press were just; but, at the same time, the author of those observations[193] displayed a complete ignorance of the actual state of society.

No doubt ministers, to whatever shade of opinion they have belonged, have, since 1814, been harassed by the newspapers; no doubt the press tends to subdue the Sovereignty, to force the Royalty and the Chambers to obey it; no doubt, during the last days of the Restoration, the press, listening only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian Expedition, enlarged on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure; it divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated the point selected for the disembarkation.

Would the Cardinal de Richelieu and Bonaparte have brought Europe to the feet of France, if the mystery of their negociations had been thus revealed in advance, or the halting-places of their armies set forth?

All this is both true and hateful; but the remedy?

The press is an element till lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now introduced into the world; it is speech in the shape of a thunder-bolt;

it is the electricity of society.

How can you prevent its existence?

The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion.

You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with the steam-engine.

You must learn to use it while making it safe, either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which will henceforth govern humanity.

One proof of the powerlessness of the press in certain cases is derived from the very reproach which you made against it in regard to the Algerian Expedition: you have taken Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had caused the war with Spain to be waged, in 1823, under the hottest fire of that liberty.

But what is not to be endured in the Report of the ministers is that shameless pretension, namely, that "the King has a power pre-existent to the laws."

What, then, is the meaning of constitutions?

Why deceive the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to alter the order of established government?

And yet the signatories of the Report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly quote Article XIV.

[194] to which I had long been prophesying that "they would confiscate the Charter;" they recall it, but only for memory, and as a superfluity of right of which they had no need.

[Sidenote: The Ordinances of July.

] The first Ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the press in all its parts; this is the quintessence of all that had been elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the police.

The second Ordinance reforms the law of election.

Thus the two first liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn up by the roots: and that, not by an iniquitous and yet legal act, emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by "ordinances," as in the days of the King's will and pleasure.

And five men, not lacking common-sense, were, with unexampled levity, precipitating themselves, their master, the Monarchy, France and Europe into a whirlpool.

I did not know what was happening in Paris.

I was hoping that a resistance, without overturning the throne, would have obliged the Crown to dismiss the ministers and recall the Ordinances.

In the event of the triumph of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and speak against those unconstitutional measures.

If the members of the Diplomatic Body exercised no direct influence upon the Ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes; absolute Europe abhorred our Charter.

When the news of the Ordinances reached Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in their success, M. Ancillon exclaimed that Europe was saved, and M. de Metternich displayed unspeakable delight.

Soon, having learnt the truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed: he declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an Austrian Constitution.

The nominations of councillors of State following upon the Ordinances of July throw some light upon the persons who, in the ante-chambers, gave their assistance to the Ordinances either with their advice or their composition.

You there see the names of the men most opposed to the representative system.

Was it in the King's own closet, under the Monarch's eyes, that those fatal documents were drawn up?

Was it in M. de Polignac's closet?

Was it in a meeting of ministers alone, or assisted by a few anti-constitutional pudding-heads?

Was it "under seal," in some secret sitting of the "Ten," that those decrees were minuted by virtue of which the Legitimate Monarchy was condemned to be strangled on the "Bridge of Sighs?"

Was the idea M. de Polignac's alone?

Perhaps history will never tell us.

On arriving at Gisors, I learnt that Paris had risen, and heard alarming things said, which proved how seriously the Charter was taken by people throughout France.

At Pontoise, they had still more recent, but confused and contradictory news.

At Herblay, there were no horses at the post-office.

I waited nearly an hour.

They advised me to avoid Saint-Denis, because I should find barricades there.

At Courbevoie, the postillion had already left off his jacket with the fleurs-de-lys on the buttons.

They had fired that morning at a calash which he was driving in Paris through the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

In consequence, he told me that he would not take me by that avenue, but that he would make for the Barrière du Trocadéro, to the right of the Barrière de l'Étoile.

This barrier gives a view over Paris.

I saw the tricolour flag waving; I judged that it was a case not of a riot, but of a revolution.

I had a presentiment that my role was about to change: that, having hurried back to defend the public liberties, I should be obliged to defend the Royalty.

Here and there, clouds of white smoke rose among blocks of houses.

I heard some cannon-shots and musketry-fire mixed with the droning of the tocsin.

It seemed to me that I saw the fall of the old Louvre from the top of the waste upland destined by Napoleon for the site of the palace of the King of Rome.

The spot of observation offered one of those philosophical consolations which one ruin carries to another.

My carriage went down the hill.

I crossed the Pont d'Iéna and drove up the paved avenue skirting the Champ de Mars.

All was solitary.

I found a picket of cavalry posted before the railings of the Military School;

the men looked sad and as though forgotten there.

We took the Boulevard des Invalides and the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse.

I met a few people on foot who looked surprised to see a carriage driven post as at an ordinary time.

The Boulevard d'Enfer was obstructed by felled elm-trees.

In my street[195], my neighbours were glad to see me arrive: I seemed to them a protection for the quarter.

Madame de Chateaubriand was both pleased and alarmed at my return.

[Sidenote: The revolution of July.

] On Thursday morning, the 29th of July, I wrote Madame Récamier, at Dieppe, a letter prolonged by postscripts: "_Thursday morning_, 29 _July_ 1830. "I write to you without knowing whether my letter will reach you, for the post no longer goes out.

"I entered Paris amid the booming of guns, the rattle of musketry, the clanging of the tocsin.

This morning the tocsin is still sounding, but I no longer hear any firing; it seems that they are organizing themselves, and that resistance will continue until the Ordinances are repealed.

There you see the immediate result (without speaking of the definite result) of the act of perjury the blame for which, at least in appearance, the ministers have allowed to fall upon the Crown!

"The National Guard, the Polytechnic School, all have taken part in the business.

I have seen no one yet.

You can imagine in what a state I found Madame de Chateaubriand.

People who, like her, have seen the 10th of August and the 2nd of September have remained under the impression of terror.

One regiment, the 5th of the Line, has already gone over to the Charter.

M.

de Polignac is certainly most guilty; his want of capacity is a poor excuse; ambition for which one has not the talent is a crime.

They say that the Court is at Saint-Cloud and ready to leave.

"I do not speak to you of myself; my position is painful, but clear.

I shall betray neither the King nor the Charter, neither the Legitimate Power nor liberty.

I have therefore nothing to say or do, but to wait and weep for my country.

God knows now what is going to happen in the provinces: already they are talking of an insurrection at Rouen.

On the other side, the Congregation will arm the Chouans and the Vendée. On what small things do empires depend!

An Ordinance and half-a-dozen stupid or unscrupulous ministers are enough to turn the most peaceful and flourishing country into the most disturbed and unhappy country."

"The firing is recommencing.

It appears they are attacking the Louvre, where the King's troops have entrenched themselves.

The suburb in which I live is beginning to rise in insurrection.

They speak of a provisional government with General Gérard[196], the Duc de Choiseul[197] and M. de La Fayette at its head.

"This letter will probably not leave, Paris having been declared in a state of siege.

Marshal Marmont is commanding in the King's name.

He is said to be killed, but I do not believe it.

Try not to alarm yourself unduly.

May God protect you!

We shall meet again!

"_Friday.

_ "This letter was written yesterday; it could not be sent.

All is over: the popular victory is complete; the King yields on all points, but I fear they will not go far beyond the concessions made by the Crown.

I wrote to His Majesty this morning.

For the rest, I have a complete plan of sacrifices for the future which pleases me.

We will talk of it when you are here.

"I am going to post this letter myself and to stroll through Paris."

The Ordinances, dated 25 July, were published in the _Moniteur_ of the 26th.

Their secret had been so profoundly kept that neither the Maréchal Duc de Raguse, who was major-general of the Guard on duty, nor M.

Mangin[198], the Prefect of Police, had been taken into confidence.

The Prefect of the Seine[199] heard of the Ordinances only through the _Moniteur_: the same was the case with the Under-secretary of State for War[200]; and this in spite of the fact that it was those several officials who disposed of the different forces of the army.

The Prince de Polignac, who held M. de Bourmont's portfolio ad interim, concerned himself so little with this trifling matter of the Ordinances that he spent the day, on the 26th, presiding over an adjudication at the War Office.

The King left on a hunting-party on the 26th, before the _Moniteur_ had reached Saint-Cloud, and did not return from Rambouillet till midnight.

At last the Duc de Raguse received this note from M. de Polignac: "Your Excellency is aware of the extraordinary measures which the King, in his wisdom and in his love for his people, has thought it necessary to take for the maintenance of the rights of his crown and of public order.

In these important circumstances, His Majesty relies on your zeal to ensure order and tranquillity throughout the extent of your command."

[Sidenote: Action of the press.

] This audacity displayed by the weakest men that ever lived against the force that was about to pulverize an empire can be explained only as being a sort of hallucination resulting from the counsels of a wretched set which was no longer to be found at the hour of danger.

The newspaper-editors, after consulting Messieurs Dupin, Odilon Barrot, Barthe[201] and Mérilhou[202], resolved to bring out their impressions without authorization, in order to compel their seizure and to plead the illegality of the Ordinances.

They met at the office of the _National_: M. Thiers drew up a protest which was signed by forty-four editors[203] and which appeared, on the morning of the 27th, in the _National_ and the _Temps.

_ In the evening, a few deputies met at M. de Laborde's[204].

They agreed to meet again the next day at M. Casimir Périer's. There appeared, for the first time, one of the three powers that were to occupy the scene: the Monarchy was in the Chamber of Deputies, the Usurpation at the Palais-Royal, the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville.

Crowds gathered at the Palais-Royal in the evening; stones were thrown at M. de Polignac's carriage.

The Duc de Raguse having seen the King at Saint-Cloud, on his return from Rambouillet, the King asked him the news from Paris: "The stocks have fallen."

"How much?"

asked the Dauphin "Three francs," answered the marshal.

"They will go up again," replied the Dauphin, and every one went away.

The day of the 27th began badly.

The King invested the Duc de Raguse with the command of Paris.

This was relying on bad fortune.

The marshal came to instal himself at the Staff-office of the Guard on the Place du Carrousel, at one o'clock.

M.

Mangin sent to seize the printing-presses of the _National_; M. Carrel resisted; Messieurs Mignet and Thiers, thinking the game lost, disappeared for two days: M. Thiers went to hide in the Montmorency Valley with a Madame de Courchamp[205], a relation of the two Messieurs Becquet[206], of whom one had worked on the _National_, the other on the _Journal des Débats.

_ At the _Temps_, the matter assumed a more serious complexion: the real hero of the journalists is incontestably M. Coste[207].

In 1823, M. Coste was managing the _Tablettes historiques_[208]: one of his collaborators accusing him of having sold that paper, he fought a duel and received a sword-thrust M. Coste was presented to me at the Foreign Office; discussing the liberty of the press with him, I said: "Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty; but how would you have me defend it to Louis XVIII.

, when every day you attack royalty and religion?

I beg you, in your own interest and so as to leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts which are already three-parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought to blush to attack.

Let us make a bargain: do you cease falling foul of a few feeble old men whom the Throne and the sanctuary are hardly able to protect; in exchange I give you my own person.

Attack me day and night; say anything about me that you please: I shall never make a complaint; I shall appreciate your legitimate and constitutional attack on the minister, so long as you leave the King out of it."

M.

Coste has retained a grateful memory of his interview with me.

[Sidenote: Parade of constitutionalism.

] A parade of constitutionalism took place at the office of the _Temps_ between M. Baude[209] and a commissary of police[210].

The Attorney-General[211] issued forty-four warrants against the signatories to the protest of the journalists.

At two o'clock, the monarchical faction of the revolution met at M. Périer's[212], as had been agreed upon the day before: they came to no conclusion.

The deputies adjourned to the morrow, the 28th, at M. Audry de Puyravault's[213].

M.

Casimir Périer, a man of order and wealth, did not wish to fall into the hands of the people; he continued still to cherish the hope of an arrangement with the Legitimate Royalty; he said sharply to M. de Schonen[214]: "You ruin us by departing from lawfulness; you make us give up a superb position."

This spirit of lawfulness prevailed everywhere: it showed itself at two opposite meetings, one at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's[215] the other at General Gourgaud's. M.

Périer belonged to that middle class which had constituted itself the heir of the people and the soldier.

He had courage, stability of ideas: he flung himself bravely across the revolutionary torrent to dam it; but his life was too much taken up with his health and he was too careful of his fortune: "What can you do with a man," said M. Decazes to me, "who is always examining his tongue in a looking-glass?"

The mob increased in size and began to appear under arms.

The officer of the Gendarmerie came to inform the Maréchal de Raguse that he had not enough men and that he feared lest he should be driven back: then the marshal made his military dispositions.

It was half-past four in the evening of the 27th before orders reached the barracks to take up arms.

The Paris Gendarmerie, supported by a few detachments of the Guard, tried to restore the traffic in the Rues Richelieu and Saint-Honoré.

One of these detachments was assailed, in the Rue du Duc de Bordeaux[216], by a shower of stones.

The leader of the detachment refrained from firing, when a shot from the Hôtel Royal, in the Rue des Pyramides, decided the question: it appeared that a certain Mr. Folks, who lived at this hotel, had taken up his gun and fired at the Guards from his window.

The soldiers replied with a volley at the house, and Mr. Folks fell dead with his two servants.

This is the way in which those English, who live safe and sheltered in their island, go to carry revolutions to other nations; you find them in the four corners of the world mixed up in quarrels with which they have no concern: so long as they can sell a piece of calico, what care they about plunging a nation into every kind of calamity?

What right had this Mr. Folks to shoot at French soldiers?

Was it the British Constitution that Charles X. had violated?

If anything could stigmatize the July fighting, it would be that it was begun by a bullet fired by an Englishman[217].

[Sidenote: The first shot fired.

] The first fighting, which began the day's work of the 27th a little before five o'clock in the evening, ceased at nightfall.

The gunsmiths and sword-cutlers gave up their arms to the mob; the street-lamps were broken or remained unlighted; the tricolour flag was hoisted in the darkness on the towers of Notre-Dame: the seizure of the guard-houses, the capture of the arsenal and the powder-magazines, the disarming of the fixed posts, all this was effected without opposition at daybreak on the 28th, and all was finished at eight o'clock.

The democratic or proletarian party of the revolution, in blouses or half-naked, was under arms: it was not sparing of its misery or its rags.

The mob, represented by electors whom it chose out of different bands, had succeeded in having a meeting called at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's. The party of the Usurpation did not yet show itself: its head, hiding outside Paris, did not know whether he should go to Saint-Cloud or to the Palais-Royal.

The middle-class or monarchical party, the deputies deliberated and were unwilling to be drawn into the movement.

M.

de Polignac went to Saint-Cloud and, at five o'clock in the morning, on the 28th, made the King sign the Ordinance placing Paris in a stage of siege.

On the 28th, the groups formed again in greater numbers; already the cry of "Liberty for ever!

Down with the Bourbons!"

was mingled with the cry of "The Charter for ever!"

which was heard on every side.