Part 2

This sentiment naturally led me, to conclude these Memoirs by a philosophical examination of the Hundred Days, and a refutation of the reproaches daily bestowed on the men of the 20th of March: but considerations, easy to divine, held my pen. It was my duty, to content myself with placing a statement of the facts before the eyes of the grand jury, the public, and leave it to decide. I know, that the question has been determined in the fields of Waterloo; but a victory is not a judicial sentence.

Whatever opinion the impartial reader may form of this work, I can protest beforehand, that I have not allowed myself to be influenced by any private consideration, by any feeling of hatred, affection, or gratitude. I have followed no impulse but that of my conscience, and I may say with Montaigne: "This is an honest book."

Too young to have participated in the errors or crimes of the revolution, I began and ended my political career without blot, and without reproach. The places, titles, and decorations, which the Emperor deigned to bestow on me, were the reward of several acts of great devotion to his service, and of twelve years of trials and sacrifices. Never did I receive from him any favours or gifts: I entered his service rich, I quitted it poor.

When Lyons opened to him its gates, I was free: I spontaneously embraced his cause: it appeared to me, as to the immense number of Frenchmen, that of liberty, honour, and our country. The laws of Solon declared infamous those, who took no part in civil troubles. I followed their maxims. If the misfortunes of the 20th of March must fall on the heads of the guilty, these guilty, I repeat, will not be in the eye of posterity, the Frenchmen who abandoned the royal standard, to return to the ancient colours of their country; but those imprudent and senseless men, who, by their threats, their acts of injustice, and their outrages, compelled us to choose between insurrection and slavery, between honour and infamy.

During the Hundred Days, there was no person to whom I did an ill turn; frequently I had an opportunity of doing good, and seized it with joy.

Since the return of the regal government, I have lived tranquil and solitary; and, whether from forgetfulness, or from a sense of justice, I escaped in 1815 the persecutions, which the partisans and servants of Napoleon experienced.

This explanation, or this apology, appeared to me necessary: it is right the reader should know, who it is that addresses him.

I could have wished, to abstain from speaking of the royal government in the first part of this work: but it was impossible. It was necessary for me, prominently to exhibit the errors and faults of the king's ministers one by one, to render evident this truth, that they were the sole authors of the 20th of March. When elsewhere, as here, I say the government, I mean not to designate the King, but his ministers. In a constitutional monarchy, in which the ministers are responsible, we cannot, and ought not to confound them with the King. "It is from the King," said the keeper of the seals, when he proposed to the deputies of the nation the project of a law on the responsibility of ministers, "that every act of equity, protection, and clemency, and every regular employment of power, emanates: it is to the ministers alone, that abuses, injustice, and misconduct, are to be imputed."

MEMOIRS,

&c. &c.

Until the close of the Spanish war, Napoleon, whether as the First Consul of the Republic, or as the Chief of the Empire, had never ceased to be the object of the love, the pride, and the confidence of the people. But the multitude neither judge, nor can judge of the actions of their rulers but from appearances which often mislead them in their judgment; and the loyalty of the nation then became enfeebled. The conduct of Napoleon was stigmatized as a series of hateful aggressions; the war, as an unjustifiable act of violence. Disaffection increased. Napoleon was assailed by the anger of his subjects, and, for the first time, they upbraided him with having spilt their blood, and wasted their riches, in gratifying his vain and culpable ambition.

At this juncture the public mind became absorbed in the contemplation of the invasion of Russia, and the general discontent was withdrawn from the events which had taken place in the peninsula.

Our arms were crowned with good fortune and glory at the commencement of the Russian war; but that conflict was ended by a catastrophe which has no parallel in the annals of the world.

The Emperor, who escaped almost alone from the perils of the campaign, returned to the capital. His countenance was that of a hero who defies adversity. But his firmness was deemed to be the result of heartless insensibility. Instead of inspiring the people with hope, it embittered their feelings. Louder murmurs broke forth; their indignation expressed itself with greater emphasis. Yet such was the enthusiasm which was even then inspired by the proud recollections of the triumphs of Napoleon, that France, blushing for her disgrace, implored him to win new victories. Armies formed themselves as if by enchantment, and Napoleon stood again in the midst of Germany, more terrible than ever.

After we had conquered at Lutzen, at Bautzen, and at Dresden, the battle of Leipsic was fought. Never before that day had we been doomed to witness our national armies flying before the enemy. The scattered wrecks of our battalions, which had been created by the last hope, by the last effort of our country, at length reached our frontiers. But our soldiers were no longer the vigorous and resolute warriors of France; they were bowed down by want, toil, and humiliation. Soon afterwards they were followed by wandering trains of military carriages, loaded with diseased and wounded wretches, who festered beneath the corpses amongst which they were heaped, and who at once absorbed and diffused the germs of pestilence and contagion. Even the firmest minds now yielded to despair; and the grief occasioned by the havoc now made amongst our defenders renewed the sorrows of the mothers and the wives of those who erewhile had perished in Russia and in Spain. Curses upon Napoleon, the author of all these evils, resounded from side to side of the empire.

As long as good fortune waited upon Napoleon, his most ambitious attempts commanded the applauses of the nation. We boasted of his profound political wisdom, we extolled his genius, we worshipped his courage. When his fortune changed, then his political wisdom was called treachery, his genius, ambition, and his courage, fool-hardiness and infatuation.

Napoleon was not to be depressed by ingratitude or misfortune. He re-assembled the feeble fragments of his armies, and proclaimed aloud that he would conquer or die at the head of his soldiery. This resolution only produced a momentary impression. The French, who so lately believed that the happiness and salvation of France depended only upon the life of Napoleon, now coolly considered that his death, the fate which he was prepared to encounter, afforded the only means of putting an end to the calamities of war, for peace otherwise appeared unattainable.

Napoleon departed. He achieved prodigies, but to no effect. National spirit no longer existed, and the nation had gradually sunk into that state of insensibility so fatal to sovereigns, when the public mind has no perception of their dangers, and abandons them to their destiny.

France was thus affected when Napoleon consented to divest himself of his crown. The apathy of the nation drove him to this extremity; for it deprived him of the means either of carrying on the war, or of making peace.

The real causes of the downfal of Napoleon are to be found in his hatred towards England, and in the continental system, which resulted from that hatred. This gigantic system, which oppressed all Europe, could not fail to raise the entire continent against Napoleon and France, and thus to bring on the ruin of both. "Rome," as it is said by Montesquieu, "extended her empire because her wars only followed in succession. Each nation, such was her inconceivable good fortune, waited till another had been conquered, before beginning the attack." Rome fell as soon as all the nations assailed and penetrated on every side.]

Hostilities ended with the abdication of Napoleon. The people of Paris, who had scarcely recovered from the panic with which they were struck by the marauding hordes of Russia, displayed the most extravagant gladness when they thought that they were delivered from the visitation, which again threatened them in the presence of the allies and the imperial army.

The neighbouring departments, which the enemy prepared to invade, rejoiced on being relieved from impending pillage and devastation.

The departments which had been occupied by the enemy were intoxicated with joy, when they anticipated the termination of their sufferings.

Thus almost all the people of France turned away from their discarded sovereign. And they abandoned themselves to joy when they thought that they were delivered from the scourge of war, and that they could hope to enjoy the blessings of peace.

It was in the midst of this pouring out of the spirit of selfishness, that the senate raised the brother of Louis XVI. to the throne. His election was not in conformity to the expectations of the people, and it disappointed the wishes which had been uttered in favour of the Empress and her son; yet the choice of the senate was but slightly opposed, because the recall of Louis seemed to be necessarily the pledge of peace. And peace was more the object of the public wish than any other thing. Besides which, the Bourbons followed the wise counsels which had been given to them. They lost no time in issuing their proclamations, couched in fair language, in order to calm the fears and diminish the antipathies excited by their recall.

"We will guarantee," said they, "the rank, the honours, and the rewards of the military.

"The magistracy and all public functionaries shall retain their offices and their pre-eminence.

"To the people we promise a total oblivion of their political conduct; and we will maintain them in the full enjoyment of their civil rights, their property, and their social institutions."