Part 18

We laughed at poor Blücher's strange hallucination, which, though ludicrous, is very sad. He fancies himself with child by a Frenchman; and deplores that such an event should have happened to him in his old age! He does not so much mind being with child, but cannot reconcile himself to the thought that he--of all people in the world--should be destined to give birth to a Frenchman! On every other subject Blücher is said to be quite rational. This peculiar form of madness shows the bent of his mind; so that while we laugh our hearts reproach us. The Duke of Wellington assures me that he knows this to be a fact.

Finally, attention may be drawn to a singular and interesting letter from Sir Walter Scott to Shelley, giving some advice which it may be presumed the young poet did not take to heart. He was "cautioned against enthusiasm, which, while it argued an excellent disposition and a feeling heart, requires to be watched and restrained, though not repressed."

XVI

BURMA

"The Spectator," June 28, 1913

The early history of the British connection with Burma presents all the features uniformly to be found in the growth of British Imperialism. These are, first, reluctance to move, coupled with fear of the results of expansion, ending finally with a cession to the irresistible tendency to expand; secondly, vagueness of purpose as to what should be done with a new and somewhat unwelcome acquisition; thirdly, a tardy recognition of its value, with the result that what was first an inclination to make the best of a bad job only gradually transforms itself into a feeling of satisfaction and congratulation that, after all, the unconscious founders of the British Empire, here as elsewhere, blundered more or less unawares into the adoption of a sound and far-seeing Imperial policy.

In 1825, Lord Amherst, in one of those "fits of absence" which the dictum of Sir John Seeley has rendered famous, took possession of some of the maritime provinces of Burma, and in doing so lost three thousand one hundred and fifteen men, of whom only a hundred and fifty were killed in action. Then the customary fit of doubt and despondency supervened. It was not until four years after the conclusion of peace that a British Resident was sent to the Court of Ava in the vain hope that he would be able to negotiate the retrocession of the province of Tenasserim, as "the Directors of the East India Company looked upon this territory as of no value to them." For a quarter of a century peace was preserved, for there ruled at Ava a prince "who was too clear-sighted to attempt again to measure arms with the British troops." Anon he was succeeded by a new king--the Pagàn Prince--"who cared for nothing but mains of cocks, games, and other infantile amusements," and who, after the manner of Oriental despots, inaugurated his reign by putting to death his two brothers and all their households. "There were several hundreds of them." It is not surprising that under a ruler addicted to such practices the British sailors who frequented the Burmese ports should have been subjected to maltreatment. Their complaints reached the ears of the iron-fisted and acquisitive Lord Dalhousie, who himself went to Rangoon in 1852, and forthwith "decided on the immediate attack of Prome and Pegu." M. Dautremer speaks in flattering terms of "the tenacity and persistence of purpose which make the strength and glory of British policy." He might truthfully have added another characteristic feature which that policy at times displays, to wit, sluggishness. It was not until sixteen years after Lord Dalhousie's annexation of Lower Burma that the English bethought themselves of improving their newly acquired province by the construction of a railway, and it was not till 1877 that the first line from Rangoon to Prome--a distance of only one hundred and sixty-one miles--was opened. During all this time King Mindon ruled in native Burma. He "gave abundant alms to monks," and, moreover, which was perhaps more to the purpose, he was wise enough to maintain relations with Great Britain which were "quite cordial." Eventually the Nemesis which appears to attend on all semi-civilised and moribund States when they are brought in contact with a vigorous and aggressive civilisation appeared in the person of the "Sapaya-lat," the "middle princess," who induced her feeble husband, King Thibaw, to carry out massacres on a scale which, even in Burma, had been heretofore unprecedented. Then the British on the other side of the frontier began to murmur and "to consider whether it was possible to endure a neighbour who was so cruel and so unpopular." All doubts as to whether the limits of endurance had or had not been reached were removed when the impecunious and spendthrift king not only imposed a very unjust fine of some £150,000 on the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, but also had the extreme folly to "throw himself into the arms of France"--a scheme which was at once communicated by M. Jules Ferry to Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador in Paris. Then war with Burma was declared, and after some tedious operations, which involved the sacrifice of many valuable lives, and which extended over three years, the country was "completely pacified" by 1889, and Lord Dufferin added the title of "Ava" to the Marquisate which was conferred on him.

In 1852, when Lord Dalhousie annexed Lower Burma, Rangoon was "merely a fishing village." It is now a flourishing commercial town of some 300,000 inhabitants. In 1910-11 the imports into Burmese ports, including coast trade, amounted to £13,600,000. The exports, in spite of a duty on rice which is of a nature rather to shock orthodox economists, were nearly £23,000,000 in value. The revenue in 1910 was about £7,391,000, of which about £2,590,000 was on Imperial and the balance on local account. Burma is in the happy position of being in a normal state of surplus, and is thus able to contribute annually a sum of about £2,500,000 to the Indian exchequer, a sum which those who are specially interested in Burmese prosperity regard as excessive, whilst it is apparently regarded as inadequate by some of those who look only to the interests of the Indian taxpayers.

The account which M. Dautremer, who was for long French Consul at Rangoon, has given of the present condition of Burma is preceded by an introduction from the pen of Sir George Scott, who can speak with unquestionable authority on Burmese affairs. It is clear that neither author has allowed himself in any way to be biassed by national proclivities, for whilst the Frenchman compares British and French administrative methods in a manner which is very much to the detriment of the latter, the Englishman, on the other hand, launches the most fiery denunciations against those of his countrymen who are responsible for Indian policy. Their want of enterprise is characterised by the appalling polysyllabic adjective "hebetudinous," which it is perhaps as well to explain means obtuse or dull, and they are told that they "are infected with the Babu spirit, and cannot see beyond their immediate horizon."

M. Dautremer thinks that it is somewhat narrow-minded of the Englishman to inflict on himself the torture of wearing cloth or flannel clothes in order that he may not be taken for a chi-chi or half-caste, who very wisely dresses in white. He expostulates against the social tyranny which obliges him to pay visits between twelve and two "in such a climate and with such a temperature," and he gently satirises the isolation of the different layers of English society--civilian, military, and subordinate services--in words which call to mind the striking account given by the immortal Mr. Jingle of the dockyard society of Chatham and Rochester. It is, however, consolatory to learn that all classes combined in giving a hearty welcome to the genial and sympathetic Frenchman who was living in their midst. Save on these minor points, M. Dautremer has, for the most part, nothing but praise to accord. He thinks that "all the British administrative officers in Burma are well-educated and capable men, who know the country of which they are put in charge, and are fluent in the language." He writhes under the highly centralised and bureaucratic system adopted by his own countrymen. He commends the English practice under which "the Home Government never interferes in the management of internal affairs," and it is earnestly to be hoped that the commendation is deserved, albeit of late years there have occasionally been some ominous signs of a tendency to govern India rather too much in detail from London. Speaking of the rapid development of Burmese trade, M. Dautremer says, in words which are manifestly intended to convey a criticism of his own Government, "This is an example of the use of colonies to a nation which knows how to put a proper value on them and to profit by them."

The warm appreciation which M. Dautremer displays of the best parts of the English administrative system enhances his claims for respectful attention whenever he indulges in criticism. He finds two rather weak points in the administration. In the first place, he attributes the large falling-off in the export of teak, inter alia, to "the increase in Government duties and the much more rigid rules for extraction," and he adds that the Government, which is itself a large dealer in timber, has "by its action created a monopoly which has raised prices to the highest possible limit." The subject is one which would appear to require attention. The primary business of any Government is not to trade but to administer, and, as invariably happens, the violation of a sound economic principle of this sort is certain sooner or later to carry its own punishment with it. In the second place, the Forest Department, which is of very special importance in Burma, is a good deal crippled by the "want of energy and want of industry which are unfortunately common in the subordinate grades. The reason for this state of things is to be found in the fact that the pay and prospects are not good enough to attract really capable men." In many quarters, notably in Central Africa, British Treasury officials have yet to learn that, from every point of view, it is quite as great a mistake to employ underpaid administrative agents as it would be for an employer of labour to proceed on the principle that low wages necessarily connote cheap production.

Sir George Scott in his introduction strikes a very different note from that sounded by M. Dautremer. He alleges that the wealthy province of Burma, which M. Dautremer tells us is not unseldom called "the milch-cow of India," is starved, that its financial policy has been directed by "cautious, nothing-venture, mole-horizon people," who have hid their talent in a napkin; that "everything seems expressly designed to drive out the capital" of which the country stands so much in need; that not nearly enough has been done in the way of expenditure on public works, notably on roads and railways, and that when these latter have been constructed, they have sometimes been in the wrong directions. He cavils at M. Dautremer's description of Burma as "a model possession," and holds that "as a matter of bitter fact, the administrative view is that of the parish beadle, and the enterprise that of the country-carrier with a light cart instead of a motor-van."

It would require greater local knowledge than any possessed by the writer of the present article either to endorse or to reject these formidable accusations, although it may be said that the violence of Sir George Scott's invective is not very convincing, but rather raises a strong suspicion that he has overstated his case. Nothing is more difficult, either for a private individual or for a State financier, than to decide the question of when to be bold and when cautious in the matter of capital outlay. It is quite possible to push to an extreme the commonplace, albeit attractive, argument that large expenditure will be amply remunerative, or even if not directly remunerative, highly beneficial "in the long run." Although this plea is often--indeed, perhaps generally--valid, it is none the less true that the run which is foreshadowed is at times so long as to make the taxpayer, who has to bear the present cost, gasp for breath before the promised goal is reached. Pericles, by laying out huge sums on the public buildings of Athens, earned the undying gratitude of artistic posterity. Whether his action was in the true interests of his Athenian contemporaries is perhaps rather more doubtful. The recent history of Argentina is an instance of a country in which, as subsequent events have proved, the plea for lavish capital expenditure was perfectly justifiable, but in which, nevertheless, the over-haste shown in incurring heavy liabilities led to much temporary inconvenience and even disaster. But on the whole it may be said that where all the general conditions are favourable, and point conclusively to the possibility and probability of fairly rapid economic development, a bold financial policy may and should be adopted, even although it may not be easy to prove beforehand by very exact calculations that any special project under consideration will be directly remunerative. Egyptian finance is a case in point. At a time when the country was in the throes of bankruptcy, a fresh loan of £1,000,000 was, to the dismay of the conventional financiers, contracted, the proceeds of which were spent on irrigation works. So also the construction of the Assouan dam, which cost nearly double the sum originally estimated, was taken in hand at a moment when a liability of a wholly unknown amount on account of the war in the Soudan was hanging over the head of the Egyptian Treasury. In both of these cases subsequent events amply justified the financial audacity which had been shown. In the case of Burma there appears to be no doubt as to the wealth of the province or its capacity for further development. In view of all the circumstances of the case the amount of twelve millions, which is apparently all that has been spent on railway construction since 1869, would certainly appear to be rather a niggardly sum. In spite, therefore, of the very unnecessary warmth with which Sir George Scott has urged his views, it is to be hoped that his plea for the adoption of a somewhat bolder financial policy in the direction of expenditure on railways, and still more on feeder roads, will receive from the India Office, with whom the matter really rests, the attention which it would certainly appear to deserve. The case of public buildings, of which Burma apparently stands much in need, is different. They cannot, strictly speaking, be said to be remunerative, and should almost, if not quite, invariably be paid for out of revenue.

XVII

A PSEUDO-HERO OF THE REVOLUTION

"The Spectator," July 5, 1913

If it be a fact, as Carlyle said, that "History is the essence of innumerable biographies," it is very necessary that the biographies from which that essence is extracted should be true. It was probably a profound want of confidence in the accuracy of biographical writing that led Horace Walpole to beg for "anything but history, for history must be false." Modern industry and research, ferreting in the less frequented bypaths of history, have exposed many fictions, and have often led to some strikingly paradoxical conclusions. They have substituted for Cambronne's apocryphal saying at Waterloo the blunt sarcasm of the Duke of Wellington that there were a number of ladies at Brussels who were termed "la vieille garde," and of whom it was said "elles ne meurent pas et se rendent toujours." They have led one eminent historian to apologise for the polygamous tendencies of Henry VIII.; another to advance the startling proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barère, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe that William Tell was a mythological marksman and Gessler a wholly impossible bailiff. Nevertheless the inexorable laws of evidence demand that this sacrifice should be made on the altar of historical truth. M. Gastine has now ruthlessly quashed out another picturesque legend. Tallien--the "bristly, fox-haired" Tallien of Carlyle's historical rhapsody--and La Cabarrus--the fair Spanish Proserpine whom, "Pluto-like, he gathered at Bordeaux"--have so far floated down the tide of history as individuals who, like Byron's Corsair, were

Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

Of the crimes there could, indeed, never have been any doubt, but posterity took but little heed of them, for they were amply condoned by the single virtue. That virtue was, indeed, of a transcendent character, for it was nothing less than the delivery of the French nation from the Dahomey-like rule of that Robespierre who deluged France in blood, and who, albeit in Fouché's words he was "terribly sincere," at the same time "never in his life cared for any one but himself and never forgave an offence." Moreover, the act of delivery was associated with an episode eminently calculated to appeal to human sentiment and sympathy. It was thought that the love of a fair woman whose life was endangered had nerved the lover and the patriot to perform an heroic act at the imminent risk of his own life. Hence the hero became "Le Lion Amoureux," and the heroine was canonised as "Notre Dame de Thermidor."

M. Gastine has now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, present a single redeeming feature.

Madame Tallien was the daughter of François Cabarrus, a wealthy Spaniard who was the banker of the Spanish Court. The great influence which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of Madame de Staël and other intellectuals, but Princess Hélène Ligne said of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards her physical attractions, however, no dissentient voice has ever been raised. "Her beauty," the Duchess d'Abrantès says in her memoirs, "of which the sculptors of antiquity give us but an incomplete idea, had a charm not met with in the types of Greece and Rome." Every man who approached her appears to have become her victim. Lacretelle, who himself worshipped at her shrine, says, "She appeared to most of us as the Spirit of Clemency incarnate in the loveliest of human forms." At a very early age she married a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Fontenay, from whom she was speedily divorced. It is not known for what offence she was arrested and imprisoned. Probably the mere fact that she was a marquise was sufficient to entangle her in the meshes of the revolutionary net. It is certain, however, that whilst lying under sentence of death in the prison at Bordeaux she attracted the attention of Tallien, the son of the Marquis of Bercy's butler and ci-devant lawyer's clerk, who had blossomed into "a Terrorist of the first water." He obtained her release and she became his mistress. She took advantage of the equivocal but influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal lenity shown by Tallien to aristocrats rendered him an object of suspicion, whilst the marked tendency displayed by Robespierre to mistrust and, finally, to immolate his coadjutors was an ominous indication of the probable course of future events. Robespierre had already destroyed Vergniaud by means of Hébert, Hébert by means of Danton, and Danton by means of Billaud. As a preliminary step to the destruction of Tallien, he caused his mistress to be arrested, probably with a view to seeing what evidence against her paramour could be extracted before she was herself guillotined.

From this point in the narrative history is merged into legend. The legend would have us believe that on the 7th Thermidor the "Citoyenne Fontenay" sent a dagger to the "Citoyen Tallien," accompanied by a letter in which she said that she had dreamt that Robespierre was no more, and that the gates of her prison had been flung open. "Alas!" she added, "thanks to your signal cowardice there will soon be no one left in France capable of bringing such a dream to pass." Tallien besought Robespierre to show mercy, but "the Incorruptible was inflexible." Then the "Lion Amoureux" roared, being, as the legend relates, stricken to the heart at the appalling danger to which his beloved mistress was exposed or, as his detractors put the case, being in deadly fear that the untoward revelations of the Citoyenne might cost him his own head. The next act in this Aeschylean drama is described by the believers in the legend in the following words: "Tallien drew Theresia's dagger from his breast and flashed it in the sunlight as though to nerve himself for the desperate business that confronted him. 'This,' he cried passionately, 'will be my final argument,' and looking about him to make sure he was alone he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it."

The result, it is alleged, was that Tallien provoked the episode of the 9th Thermidor (July 22, 1794). The few faltering sentences which Robespierre wished to utter were never spoken. He was "choked by the blood of Danton," and hurried off to the guillotine which awaited him on the morrow.

History, which in this instance is not legendary, relates that on the death of the tyrant a wild shout of exultation was raised by the joyous people who had for so long wandered in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. To whom, they asked, did they owe their liberty? What was more natural than to assume that it was to the brave Tallien and to the loving woman who armed him to strike a blow for the freedom of France? Tallien and his mistress became, therefore, the idols of the French people. The Chancellor Pasquier relates their appearance at a theatre:

The enthusiasm and the applause were indescribable. The occupants of the boxes, the people in the pit, men and women alike, stood up on their chairs to look at him. It seemed as though they would never weary of gazing at him. He was young, rather good-looking, and his manner was calm and serene. Madame Tallien was at his side and shared his triumph. In her case also everything had been forgiven and forgotten. Similar scenes were enacted all through the autumn of that year. Never was any service, however great, rewarded by gratitude so lively and so touching.

It would be impossible within the limits of the present article to summarise the arguments by which M. Gastine seeks to destroy this myth. Allusion may, however, be made to two points of special importance. The first is that neither Tallien nor the lovely Spaniard languishing in the dungeon of La Force had much to do with the episode of the 9th Thermidor. "Tallien was a mere super, a mere puppet that had to be galvanised into action up to the very last." The man who really organised the movement and persuaded his coadjutors that they were engaged in a life and death struggle with Robespierre was he who, as every reader of revolutionary history knows, was busily engaged in pulling the strings behind the scenes during the whole of this chaotic period. It was the man whose iron nerve and subtle brain enabled him, in spite of a secular course of betrayals, to keep his head on his shoulders, and finally to escape the clutches of Napoleon, who, as Lord Rosebery tells us, always deeply regretted that he had not had him "hanged or shot." It was Fouché.

In the second place, there is conclusive evidence to show that, to use the ordinary slang expression of the present day, the celebrated dagger letter was "faked." When Robespierre fell, Tallien never gave a thought to his mistress. He still trembled for his own life. "His sole aim was to make away with Robespierre's papers." It was only on the 12th Thermidor--that is to say, two days after Robespierre's mangled head had been sheared off by the guillotine--that, noting the trend of public opinion, and appreciating the capital which might be made out of the current myth, he hurried off to La Force and there concocted with his mistress the famous letter which he, of course, antedated.

The subsequent careers of Tallien and his wife--for he married La Cabarrus in December 1794--are merely characterised by a number of unedifying details. The hero of this sordid tale passed through many vicissitudes. He went with Napoleon to Egypt. He was, on his return voyage, taken prisoner by an English cruiser. On his arrival in London he was well received by Fox and the Whigs--a fact which cannot be said to redound much to the credit either of the Whig party or its leader. He gambled on the Stock Exchange, and at one time "blossomed out as a dealer in soap, candles, and cotton bonnets." After passing through an unhonoured old age, he died in great poverty in 1820. The heroine became intimate with Josephine during Napoleon's absence in Egypt, was subsequently divorced from Tallien, and later, after passing through a phase when she was the mistress of the banker Ouvrard, married the Prince of Caraman-Chimay. Her conduct during the latter years of her life appears to have been irreproachable. She died in 1835.